Black fine line tattoo of six arrows of varying designs running vertically across the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Six arrows in a row on the forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Six arrows point upward in staggered vertical lines, each with a different head and fletching, from triangular tips to chevron and feathered tails. The linework is thin and even in solid black ink, with no shading. The tattoo sits on a pale forearm against a dark plaid shirt and a braid of dark hair, with the design centred in the frame.

Fine line Forearm Arrow Line drawing

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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

Mrs Pinnock kept the attic key on a loop of baling twine, and it fell to me to fetch the trunk when the summer lets ran out in September. Nobody had opened it since her husband died. Inside, wrapped in a tea towel printed with lighthouses, lay six arrows set side by side, staggered like a row of hymn numbers.

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Each one was made differently. The first had a flat triangular head and feathers trimmed square. The next had a barbed point and a tail like a herring bone. Gerald Pinnock had been a fletcher before he was a landlord, and the notebook beneath the arrows held a pencil sketch and a date for every shaft he had ever made. Beside each drawing was a name in his small capitals, and I knew most of them. The Hallidays. Mr Oduya, who played the piano at night. Two sisters from Leeds who argued about the tide. The sixth was a name I didn't recognise, with no date at all.

I carried the arrows down to the front room and stood them in the brass umbrella stand, points upward, so they reached toward the bay window where the sea was turning the colour of pewter. The gulls on the railings took no notice. I thought about whether a guest deserved a shaft of their own, and decided Gerald had meant the sixth one for someone who hadn't come yet.

That evening I wrote on the card above the stand: Please do not remove. Pointing the right way.