Small black fine line arrow tattoo with shaded fletching on a forearm, with the wearer's grey top visible above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Arrow tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single arrow runs diagonally across the forearm, with a thin black shaft, a dot near the rear and a pointed head at the front. The fletching is outlined and partly shaded in grey, and the linework is clean and even. The image is in black and grey on a plain skin tone, with a grey textured top cropped out of frame above.

Fine line Forearm Arrow Fletching

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire is only good for the first hour, and you will want your back to the wall before the gossip starts. My grandmother had a bow she never let anyone string but herself, and a single arrow she kept in the tin with the buttons. Every winter she took it out and turned it in the lamplight, and she would say the arrow was not for shooting. It was for going somewhere and coming back without it.

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The summer the river flooded Harrow Lane, a boy from the mill named Tobiah ran into the water after a dog that was not his. The current took his legs before anyone could reach him. My grandmother stood on the bank with the bow across her knees and the arrow already nocked, because she had seen which way the rope would have to fly. She did not hesitate. The arrow carried the line across the water in one clean arc, and the boy caught hold of it with both hands.

Nobody thanked her that day. The mill men were too busy hauling, and Tobiah was too busy being sick on the cobbles. But the next morning she found the arrow lying in her doorway, its shaft wrapped in red wool, and a note in a child's hand that said only: keep this, it knows the way back.

She kept it in the tin until she died. When I was small I asked her why the wool was red. She laughed and said she had never once been able to tell him it was the colour of the dog's collar.