Close view of a fine line black arrow tattoo on the forearm and a cluster of small dots above the elbow on the upper arm, with a light grey top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small arrow and dots on an arm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black arrow pointing downward sits on the forearm, with a simple open head and a fletched tail. Above the elbow on the upper arm, a scattered group of tiny dots is placed in an irregular cluster. The ink is solid black in fine, delicate strokes, set against bare skin, a pale top and a soft, blurred outdoor background.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Upper arm Arrow Dot

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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 of bulbs goes up on the third night, once the generator has been coaxed back to life for the fourth time that week. You stand on the back of the lorry with a coil of flex between your teeth while Dennis swears at the big wheel below. Somebody has to decide which bulb goes where, and it has always been you, because you counted the lights on the Harrow fair when you were eight and got the number right when the grown men could not.

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Dennis wants the lamps scattered across the top of the field in a loose cluster, the way they sat over the Ashdown orchard the summer your uncle ran the swings. You pin nine of them to the canvas with drawing pins and step back into the wet grass to judge. Then the arrow. The painted board for the shooting gallery has been ruined by rain since Easter, so you take the ink pot and mark a fresh one on the flap of the ticket booth, the shaft straight, the head turned to the ground, the fletching fanned out like a bird folding its wings.

The first customer of the season is a boy in a cap who wins nothing and wants nothing except to know where the lamps come from. You tell him the truth: the generator, a lot of swearing, and luck. He points at the arrow instead. It is not aimed at the stalls where it ought to be. It points past the tent pegs, at the dip in the ground where the old pond used to sit before they filled it in.

At dawn you walk down with a spade and find the rusted biscuit tin, the one with the spare bulbs that went missing the year the fair sold the big wheel. You hold it up to the grey light, and the rain beading on its lid looks exactly like a handful of stars. By noon the fair is packed and rolling east, and the arrow goes with you, still pointing down at the place you have just left.