Hand-drawn blue ink arrows in varied directions and fletching on a white background, presented as a tattoo flash sheet with no body placement shown.

Blue ink arrow flash sheet

Colour · Flash

A sheet of hand-drawn arrow designs in shades of blue ink on white paper, with arrows pointing left, right and up or down. The linework is loose and sketchy, with feathered fletching in some arrows and solid or outlined arrowheads, and shading comes from varying the depth of blue wash. The arrows are arranged in rows and columns with plenty of white space between them.

Arrow Fletching Arrowhead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dilys had been drawing arrows on the back of the church hall noticeboard since March, and by June the parish council had stopped asking what they were for. Each one was done in blue ink with a wash of water brushed over, so the shafts faded pale at one end and darkened at the other. She said the feathers had to look like they'd been rained on and dried twice, or nobody would believe in them.

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Her grandson Tomos assumed they were for the summer fête, which they were not, since the fête had a tombola and no archery. The real reason was that a lorry had knocked the bridge sign flat in February, and the council would only replace it once someone could prove which way the lane really ran. Dilys drew eleven arrows, four pointing up, three down, four across, and pinned them up so the drivers could argue with the paper instead of each other.

On the Tuesday a man from the water board stood reading them with his cap in his hands. 'They all point somewhere different,' he said. Dilys told him that was the point. Every arrow in the village pointed somewhere, and the trick was to ask which one was tired.

He tapped the bottom row, the one with feathers that looked like they'd been left out in the damp. 'That one,' he said. 'Which way's it going?' Dilys squinted at it over her glasses. 'Back the way it came, love. Most of them do, once they've been out long enough.' He looked at the arrow, then through the window at the bridge, and went off to find a spanner.