Black ink drawing of two rows of arrows with feathered fletching, wrapped shafts and varied arrowheads on a pale background.

Sheet of black ink arrow designs

Black and grey · Flash

A flash-style sheet of twenty-two arrows drawn in black ink on pale paper, arranged in two rows. Each arrow varies in shaft wrapping, banding, feathered or tapered fletching and arrowhead shape. The linework uses fine pen strokes and hatching, with solid black accents on the wraps and feather tips, and no colour.

Arrow Arrowhead Feather Fletching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Uncle Dessie would not let me near the goose feathers until I could tell a left wing from a right by the curl alone. That was my first winter on the Tern, the cabin doors open to the cold and the Lathe running brown and slow beneath the towpath.

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He kept his arrows on the roof, laid out in two rows along the sun-bleached planks, because he said a fletcher working in a cabin gets his shafts crooked from the stove heat. Every arrow was different on purpose. A spiral of waxed twine for one archer, a black band every third inch for another, a chevron of sinew for the lad at the mill who never wanted his arrows mistaken for anyone else's. "Feathers tell you what it does," he said, "but the binding tells you whose it is."

The trouble came when Mr Harrow from the hall offered to buy the lot. He wanted them plain, every shaft the same, and he would pay double. Dessie took the coin, then sat up half the night picking out his stitches. I asked him why, and he only pointed at the roof, where two arrows had slid loose from the sheet and rolled into the gutter.

In the morning I found him on his knees with his bad eye shut, feeling a fresh shaft for its wrap. I handed him the spool. He tied the first knot himself, then pressed the cord into my palm and let me finish the band, my own pattern, a crooked little zigzag that nobody else would ever make.