Black ink tattoo of four arrows with feather and leaf fletching and stippled dotwork arrowheads, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four arrows on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Four arrows run diagonally across the skin, each with a thin fine line shaft and a different fletching design, including feathered and leaf shapes. The arrowheads are filled with dotwork stippling that gives them a textured, shaded look. The ink is black only, and the arrows are spaced evenly against a pale background of skin and fabric.

Fine line Dotwork Upper arm Arrow Feather Leaf Arrowhead

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

By eleven the rain had found the gap under my awning, so I laid the finished shafts out on a folded tea towel and let the drips take the far end. Four arrows, four orders, and not one of them the same. Mrs Okafor wanted goose feathers cut tight and straight, the way her late husband used to fletch for the archery club. The lad from the vet's wanted leaves, thin card I'd shaped with a craft knife, because he said feathers were for people who had already finished growing.

Keep reading

The heads were the slow part. I stippled each one with a fine needle dipped in ink, dot by dot, because a smooth point looks bought and a stippled one looks considered. The dots took the grey light and held it, so the iron seemed to have sand caught in it. Nobody at the market ever asked about the dots. They picked the arrow up, weighed it in the palm, and looked at the point before they looked at anything else.

At half past twelve Mr Pell came back. He'd bought the lone feathered one on Thursday and returned to say the shaft had warped in the damp. I took it, sighted it along the awning pole, and found a bow in it no wider than a hair. I planed it true across my knee while he stood under the canvas and watched the water run off the edge in a bright, unbroken line.

When I handed it back he turned it over, saw the stippled head and laughed. 'Four of them,' he said, 'and you've made every one look like it's already on its way somewhere.' I packed the rest into the cardboard tube, leaving the dotted points to catch whatever light the market had left.