Black and grey fine line arrow tattoo running along the forearm, with the point towards the wrist.

Arrow tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A slim arrow runs diagonally along the forearm, with its point near the wrist and its fletching towards the elbow. The shaft is a single thin line, and the feathers are filled with solid black ink. The black and white photograph shows a dark sleeve in the background against the pale skin.

Fine line Forearm Arrow

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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

Dear Tom, the last of the goose feathers went into the glue pot at eleven, and I have been sitting under the gas lamp ever since, trying to make myself go to bed. The shop on Kirkgate smells of hot resin and wet wool. Mr Halloran would have had the shutters down hours ago, but he took the night train to Hull to see his sister, so the keys are mine now, and so is the order he left pinned above the bench.

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The order is for a single arrow, and it is the strangest I have ever been asked to make. The gentleman wants a shaft of ash no thicker than a knitting needle, the point ground so fine it would barely pierce a biscuit, and three feathers dyed black and bound so tight the thread disappears. He did not say what it was for. He only said he would collect it at dawn from the bridge, and that I was to drop it over the parapet if he did not come. I thought that was a joke until he laughed and did not smile.

I finished it at half past two. Held up to the lamp, the shaft ran straight as a surveyor's line, and the fletching was dark as a rook's wing. I thought of you on the platform at Leeds, pointing your umbrella at every departing carriage as if you could steer the whole line west by will alone. I wrapped the arrow in brown paper and tied it with the red string we keep for the post.

At first light I walked down to the bridge. The river was the colour of pewter and there was nobody on the footpath at all. I put the parcel in my coat pocket, and by the time I reached home it had gone warm, as though someone had been holding it all night. I have set it on the mantel beside your old compass. Write soon, and tell me which way the wind is blowing where you are.