Black and grey feather tattoo on the upper arm beside a small solid black arrow tattoo on the back, with a white dress visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feather and arrow tattoos on arm and back

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded feather with a long quill is tattooed on the outer upper arm, drawn with soft grey gradients along its barbs. A small solid black arrow with a pointed head sits on the side of the back, below the shoulder blade. The ink is entirely black and grey on a tanned skin tone, and the subject is framed from behind against a white halter-style dress.

Realism Fine line Upper arm Back Feather Arrow

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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

The name badge says Sheila Ashdown, but you would know her as the girl who could put a shaft dead centre from the far end of the sports hall. Nobody asked you to come to the Hartsfield reunion. The invitation arrived in a cream envelope with your own handwriting on the back from 1994, and you thought you should see who was still alive. Now she is pressing a paper cup of lukewarm squash into your hand beside the trestle table of sausage rolls and telling you the old gym is being knocked down in March.

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She leads you to the corner by the fire door, where the bunting has come loose, and reaches into her handbag for a bundle wrapped in a tea towel. Inside is a single arrow, its shaft gone grey with age, fletched with a long feather that someone has trimmed with nail scissors. 'Mr Penhale kept it in the store cupboard,' she says. 'You left it there the day you walked out of the final practice. Said you'd come back for it.' You don't remember the feather at all, only the smell of wax on the bowstring and the gym clock that always stopped at ten to three.

You turn the arrow over in your palm. The feather is lighter than you expected, and along its barbs someone has written in pencil, so faint it has nearly gone, a small tick and a date: the spring the wind took your last shot clean off the target and into the hedge. Sheila says the others put money together for a trophy that year, and you never did collect it. Outside, a coach starts up in the car park, its engine grinding through the cold.

You slide the arrow inside your coat, where it sits snug against your ribs, and you decide that this time you will be the last one to leave.