Fine line black tattoo of four arrows, one with a feather fletching, running down the outer upper arm of a person in a gingham shirt.

Four arrows on the upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Four arrows with feathered fletching run diagonally down the upper arm, each with a small pointed head, and a line of tiny script sits between the shafts. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the design is rendered in black ink against light skin. The tattoo is centred on the arm with plenty of clear skin around it, and a checked shirt sleeve sits at the top edge of the frame.

Fine line Upper arm Arrow Feather Script

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 fourth arrow would not stay in the rafters of the boarding house at Scarrow Bay. Mrs Pell pushed it back behind the clock every morning, and every evening it had slid down again, feathers first, and stood point-down on the flagstones of the hall as though it had an errand to finish. Her lodgers laughed about it over their kippers. Only the old bargeman who took the room above the scullery did not laugh.

Keep reading

He said his grandmother had told him the story of the four arrows, the way it was told on this coast. A widow kept four children in a fishing village where the sea took something every winter. Before the youngest left for the mainland she cut four shafts from ash, fletched them with gull feathers, and tipped each with a small iron head. Between the shafts she had a clerk write a line so small it could be read only by someone holding the wood close: Fly, and come back by the same road.

The three eldest arrows went where they were sent. One pinned a letter to a church door in Hull, one was carried to Canada in a sea chest, and one was lost in a storm off the Dogger and found years later in a net. The fourth stayed on its nail, and the widow would not let anyone take it down. When she died the house was let to strangers, and the arrow began its falling.

Mrs Pell took it down at last and read the tiny words by the window. Then she walked it to the harbour wall and handed it to the first boat going out. It came back that night in the same boat, its head bright with salt, and it stayed on its nail after that. Nobody needed to push it back.