A vertical column of fourteen blue watercolour arrows in varied head and fletching styles, drawn as a tattoo flash sheet on white.

Column of blue watercolour arrows

Traditional · Colour · Flash

The image shows fourteen arrows stacked vertically, each drawn horizontally with a shaft, arrowhead and fletching in different designs, including open chevron heads, solid triangular heads and feathered tails. The linework is loose and hand-painted, with the shading built from varying washes of blue watercolour. The arrows are spaced evenly on a plain white background, with some pointing left and others right.

Traditional Arrow

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

Mr Pargeter has been dipping feathers in indigo since before the church clock was mended, and by the time you come in from the yard the first batch hangs from the cross-wires like washing that has given up. He does not look up. He says, 'Left-handers' bin is nearest the door, and don't mix them again, because the last time you did, Dennis Coker shot a hay bale and called it a poacher.' You nod, though your hands are blue to the wrist and the shaft in your fingers is still warm from the glue pot.

Keep reading

You have been at the bench since seven, bringing shafts from the rack two at a time. The heads are the hard part. Some are open chevrons cut from tin and bent over a nail, and some are solid triangles filed so sharp that Pargeter won't let you touch them without a rag. He says a feather decides whether a shaft flies true or flies wild, so he makes you lay the vanes out in rows of three, then five, then the ragged pattern of a hand that has gripped too hard. Wind is coming off the moor. You can hear the lift gate going on the Bridgwater road.

At noon the carrier's boy brings a slip naming two archers who shoot against each other every summer on the green. One wants his arrows pointing the way he sends them, and the other wants the reverse, so that when the prize is handed over they will be looking at each other across the butts. Pargeter laughs for the first time that week. 'Let them argue it out in the air,' he says. 'The arrow doesn't care which way it's pointed, only that it's straight.'

You take the last shaft from the bin and lay it against the others, fourteen in all down the bench, half facing the door and half facing the window. Outside the dye is drying on the line, a column of blue that will have faded by Whit Monday. You think about which way you would fly, if anyone asked. Then you turn the arrow in your fingers, find the fletching crooked, and start again.