Black line drawing of a fine-line geometric design with three feathers, two arrows, diamond shapes, a circle and dangling beads, with no body part shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feathers, arrows and beads line design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A black linework drawing of a symmetrical design built from three tall feathers with chevron-patterned vanes, two arrows, diamond shapes, a small circle at the top and strings of dangling beads. The lines are thin and even, with no shading, and the composition is centred and vertical on a plain white background, with a horizontal line across the top.

Fine line Geometric Feather Arrow Diamond Bead Circle Chevron Line drawing

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

The third feather never matched the other two, and Mrs Okonedo at the Leeds bowmen's hall said I could not sell a set that wouldn't fly true. I had been cutting goose primaries for eleven years by then, pinning each quill to the board with a bone clip, and I knew the grain of a flight feather the way a clockmaker knows a spring. Still, the third one kept drifting left, however I trimmed the vane.

Keep reading

The commission came in October from a woman called Ruth Calder, who wanted three long feathers, two arrows and a string of glass beads for her son's room. She would not say why he had no use for shooting. She only asked that the chevrons on the vanes be cut in the old counting pattern, one notch for each season a boy is gone, and she paid in advance, in coins warm from her coat.

I worked through the winter with the window open a crack so the glue would set slow. On the last evening I held the third feather up to the lamp and saw that the drift had been the grain all along, a faint curl that wanted to turn the shaft the way a river turns a stone. I cut the vane to follow it and kept the chevrons as Ruth asked, even where they bunched near the tip.

She came for the set on the first frost. She turned each arrow over in her hands, then hung the beads from the beam above her own door, where they clicked softly whenever anyone came in. 'He would have liked the crooked one,' she said, and went out into the street without another word, the strung glass swinging behind her like something counting.