Black fine-line pen sketch of a feather-fletched arrow with beaded shaft and a diamond arrowhead, drawn on cream paper, shown as a tattoo design.

Feather and arrow design in pen

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing of an arrow on cream paper. A feathered fletching with curled wisps sits at the top left, and a long thin shaft runs diagonally down to a diamond-shaped arrowhead at the bottom right. The linework is fine and even, with hatched lines shading the feather and the arrowhead, and the shaft is decorated with small beads and diamond shapes.

Fine line Arrow Feather Bead Arrowhead Diamond

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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

"Hold it by the nock, not the shaft," Ivy said, rolling a goose wing feather between finger and thumb until its barbs lay straight. "The vanes are the only part that knows where it's going, so don't you go squashing them before it's even left the bow." Alfie nodded, though his eyes were on the tin of brass beads on the bench, the ones his grandad had strung for the boats' lanterns before the mill closed.

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She had promised him an arrow with a proper head. Not the blunt bodkin the lads at the youth club used, but a diamond filed from the lid of an old biscuit tin and hammered flat on the anvil in the yard. He wanted beads on the shaft too, and she let him choose them, provided he kept to an odd number between each one. "Even is for things that stay put," she told him. He counted them aloud, three diamonds, then a round bead, then a diamond again, and she pretended not to notice when he tried to slip in a fourth.

The first shot went over the water meadow with a sound like tearing silk. They walked the whole afternoon through the reeds, boots sinking, the mist coming up off the dyke, and found nothing. Alfie was ready to give up when Ivy saw the feather's curled wisp catch the low sun, a little flicker of cream against the brown. The shaft had snapped at the middle, but the head was still bright and the beads still ticked when he shook them. "It knew the way," Ivy said, and he carried it home cradled like a fish on a string, already asking which bead came next.