Fine line black arrow tattoo on the hip of a woman kneeling on a sandy beach in a blue swimsuit, photographed from behind.

Arrow tattoo on a hip at the beach

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long hair kneels on sand in a blue one-piece swimsuit, photographed from behind with her face out of frame. A small black arrow tattoo with thin linework sits on her hip, with a few lines of small lettering beneath it that are not legible at this size. The image is mostly warm skin tones, pale blue swimwear and sea in the background, with a soft, natural composition.

Fine line Other Arrow Script Beach Sand Ocean Long hair Bracelet

Find an artist for this

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

You learn the arrow before you learn the lamp. Your uncle Tobias chalks it on the flagstone at the top of the stairs at Carrick Mere, pointing north-west toward the gap where the sea turns green over the reef. He says it is for the boats that come in blind in fog. You suspect it is for himself, because he has been in fog since Easter, and the doctor in Penzance has stopped asking him how he sleeps.

Keep reading

Under the arrow's tail, in a hand so small you have to kneel to read it, is a line of lettering that is gone by morning. Rain takes the chalk, and the wind takes what the rain leaves. You ask him once what it says. He tells you it is a boat's name, the Marigold Ann, lost off the Stones in the winter of 1931, and that the keepers before him wrote the names of the drowned so the sea could not claim it had forgotten them. Then he goes back down to his bunk and does not come up again until the tide turns.

In October the lamp fails on a black night with a southerly running. You climb with the paraffin can and the cloth, wipe the salt from the lens until your knuckles bleed, and trim the wick until the beam finally swings out across the water. Far off, a smack's lantern wavers and then steadies, turning towards you as if it had been waiting. You stand at the rail until the light on the reef is clear and the boat has cleared the gap.

At dawn you go down to the flagstone with a stub of chalk in your fist. The old arrow has worn to a ghost. You draw a new one above it, pointing home, and then, very carefully, you write the names of the men you pulled through the gap that night, and the one you could not.