Black and grey fine line geometric arrow with overlapping circles, dotted lines and small triangles on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric arrow and circles on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical arrow runs down the forearm, with a fletched arrowhead near the top and smaller arrow and chevron marks along its length. Overlapping circles and dotted arcs sit behind the arrow, and a small inverted triangle appears near the lower section. The linework is thin and crisp in black ink on a neutral grey skin tone, with the background softly out of focus.

Fine line Geometric Dotwork Forearm Arrow Circle Triangle Dot Chevron Geometric shape

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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 string on the Lantern Bow has been replaced three times since the fair left Ashby, and still every arrow drifts left of the painted bullseye and lodges in the same knot of the board. You have checked the pulleys, sanded the shaft and walked the pitch at dawn, when dew sits on the canvas in rings like marks on a lathe. Nothing is wrong with the bow. The trouble is the target, or the way it was drawn.

Keep reading

Old Fenwick left you the ledger when his chest gave out, a cracked thing bound in tent canvas, full of sums and sketches. The last few pages are arrows: a single shaft running upward, a fletched head at the top, small darts stitched along it like seams. Circles overlap behind it, three or four, with dotted arcs drawn through their centres as if someone was tracing a path between them. Beneath the shaft he has written, in pencil gone silver, 'Sight by the rings. The point is where the arcs stop agreeing.'

You spend a week with a compass and a candle on the caravan step, working out where the arcs stop agreeing. The answer is a small triangle at the foot of the drawing, pointing down, with three chevrons below it like a row of birds gone south. The triangle is not there by accident. It is the mark Fenwick cut into the back board of the Lantern Bow, under the paint, years before anyone thought to look.

On the last night before the fair moves on, the crowd thins to a few lovers and a drunk asleep by the generator. You draw the bow, let the arcs settle in your sight, and loose. The arrow hums across the lamps, drops in a clean line and sticks in the triangle with a sound like a bell struck once. Down the length of the midway, the bulbs on the Helter Skelter go out in order, one for each chevron, until only the dark remains.