Black dotwork tattoo of a geometric arrowhead with nested chevron lines and a small diamond motif, placed on a person's shoulder blade.

Geometric arrowhead tattoo on shoulder

Dotwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A solid arrowhead outline filled with nested chevron lines and a small diamond at its centre, drawn in black ink. The outer edge is built from stippled dots, while the inner chevrons are fine, clean single lines. The photograph is taken from behind and above, with the design centred on the upper back near the shoulder and a light vest top visible beside it.

Dotwork Geometric Shoulder Arrowhead Chevron Diamond Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bow is still warm from the hearth when your uncle hands it over, and you understand he means for you to carry it up the lane rather than shoot it. Every wedding in Hollin Ford has an arrow in it somewhere, a custom nobody can explain any more. Yours is the one the bride chose, cut from ash, its head knapped from grey flint by a man who has been dead for thirty years.

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Your uncle taught you the pattern when you were small. Lay the chevrons first, he said, one folding inside the next, the way a hillside doubles back on itself when you climb it. Then the diamond at the heart, small enough to hide a seed. You spent three evenings on it with a bradawl and a jar of lamp black, dotting the edge until the outline looked chewed by weather rather than drawn.

At the chapel the groom's mother asks why the head is so plain. You tell her it is meant to be read from the front, and that a point which only shows its pattern to the person holding it is the honest sort. She laughs and does not believe you. The vicar, who has been short of breath since Easter, asks you to stand by the door with the bow while the vows are said.

When the couple come out into the rain, the bride looks at the arrow and then at you, and nods once, as if a debt has been settled. You lean the bow against the yew, unstrung, its chevrons pointing back down the lane towards the forge, where the flint is still waiting for someone to finish it.