Close view of a fine-line black geometric arrow tattoo centred on the upper back, between the shoulder blades, with black straps crossing the skin.

Geometric arrow between the shoulder blades

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical arrow built from thin black lines, with a diamond-shaped head and tail and rows of chevrons along the shaft. The linework is fine and even, with solid black ink and no shading or colour. The tattoo sits centrally on bare upper back skin, framed by two black straps that converge above it.

Fine line Geometric Back Arrow Geometric pattern Chevron Diamond Line

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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 chalk arrows on Scold Quay had been scrubbed off again by the time I came down with my tins, so I started on the dry stone by the slipway and worked my way up from the water. Tamsin Pell, who kept the harbour ledger and had opinions about everything that floated, watched me from her step with a mug going cold in her hands. She had drawn the arrow for me on a scrap of squared paper the night before: a diamond for the head, a diamond for the tail, and between them a shaft of thin strokes stacked like the ribs of a herring boat, each chevron leaning back toward the town.

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"Every row is a bar of the tide," she said. "Count them off as you go, or you'll lose the gap." The gap was the one opening in the breakwater where a boat could slip in on the ebb without touching the rocks. Half the fleet had lost a keel to it in the bad winters, and the fog that came up off the estuary made it worse every year.

I painted the arrow on the lamp post at the head of the quay with the point aimed squarely at the gap, and I kept the lines fine, almost too fine to read from the road. Pell made me stand at the water's edge to check it. From down there, she said, you had to see it or it was no use to anyone.

That night the fog came in thick enough to hide the lamps. I stood with Pell at the wall and listened to engines idling somewhere out past the rocks. Then one dark shape came round the post, saw the arrow, and turned its bow into the gap as neat as a needle. Pell opened the ledger under the lamp and wrote a single word in the margin. It was 'Seen'.