Pencil drawing of a feathered arrow design with a wrapped shaft and ornate arrowhead, shown diagonally on pale paper, with no body placement visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feathered arrow tattoo design

Black and grey · Flash

A shaded pencil drawing of an arrow shown diagonally across a pale sheet of paper. The feathered fletching at the top is detailed with fine hatching, and the shaft has bands of wrapping, while the ornate arrowhead at the bottom left has scrolling detail and layered shading. The image is in greyscale with a plain background and no body part is visible.

Arrow Feather Fletching Arrowhead

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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 rain has found the gap in the tarpaulin again, so it runs off the corner in a thin rope and drums on the crate of cedar offcuts your uncle told you not to stack. You are sixteen and minding his stall at Thornley Market on a Saturday nobody wants to shop in, which means you are alone with thirty-one arrows, a tin of wrapping thread and a clock that has stopped at ten to four.

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A woman in a grey wax coat stops at the table, shaking water from her hood like a dog. She picks up the arrow with the scrolled head, the one your uncle made from an old brass tap, and turns it slowly so the grey light catches the hatching on the feathers. 'Who fletched this?' she asks. You tell her it was you, which is half true. She runs a thumb down the shaft, over the bands of thread, and says her father bound his arrows exactly like that, one turn for every winter he spent on the moors.

She pays two pounds, the coins wet and warm from her pocket, and then asks you to finish the grip in red. Your fingers are numb, the thread keeps slipping, and you make a mess of the third band. She doesn't mind. She says the mess is what makes it hers. When she leaves she tucks the arrow under her arm with the feathers poking out past her shoulder, like someone walking away from an argument she has decided to win.

Your uncle comes back with the flask and a complaint about the parking. He sees the empty hook, the coins in the tin and the red band you botched, and says nothing for a long moment. Then he sets a fresh spool beside you and tells you to start again from the top. You do. The rain keeps falling on the tarpaulin, and each band you wind goes on a little straighter than the last.