Black fine line tattoo of an arrow with a chain of knots, a spiral and a gem pendant, running down a limb below a rolled denim hem.

Arrow with knot chain and gem drop

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical design shows an arrow with dotted shading on its fletching, followed by a stacked chain of looped knots, a spiral curl and a faceted gem-shaped drop at the bottom. The linework is fine and even, with stippled shading on the arrow head and gem, and the ink is black and grey. The design is centred on a bare limb, with the top edge cut off by a grey denim hem.

Fine line Dotwork Other Arrow Knot Spiral Gem Pendant

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

Sit closer, you lot, the fire's only warm on the side you're sat on. Now, the fletcher's girl, Hesketh's daughter, the one who lived where the last cottage gives up and the beeches start. She had a bow her father made and no arrow fit for it. Every shaft he cut came back split by the wind off the high ground.

Keep reading

So she went into the trees alone, which you never do, and asked the old oak at the boundary stone what an arrow needed to fly true. The oak said nothing, being an oak, but a jay came down and sat on her shoulder and dropped a length of blue thread. She took it as a sign and wound it tight, knot over knot, eleven times, because eleven was how many years her mother had been gone. Each knot held a little of the weight she carried, see, and the chain kept the shaft from wobbling.

Then she bound a curl of copper wire at the tail, round and round like a snail's shell, so the air would turn the arrow when it left her hand. At the very point she hung a little cut stone, faceted like a dew drop, heavy enough to pull the thing down to the ground where it belonged.

She never shot it. Not once in forty winters. Folk asked why, and she said a true arrow only wants to find where it should land. When she died they buried her beside the boundary oak, and her arrow went into the bark above her, fletching to the sky, knots facing the path. Walk past there at dusk and you'll see the gem catching the last light. That's the whole of it. Now who's getting the next log?