Small solid black tattoo of a stylised glyph with a circle at the top, a curl to the left and a downward arrow, on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Small black glyph on the inner forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small solid black tattoo of a stylised glyph sits on the inner forearm close to the wrist. The glyph has a open circle at the top, a curled stroke extending to the left, a short horizontal bar and a downward pointing arrow. The ink is black on pale skin against a plain dark clothing background, with the wrist and hand partly visible below.

Forearm Glyph Symbol Circle Arrow Cross Curl

Find an artist for this

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 lock keeper at Hawksworth could not read the mark on our bow, and he said so twice before he would open the gates. It was painted in red lead on the side of the Wren: a ring with a curl off one side like a fern going to seed, a short bar across the stem, and a little arrow pointing down at the water. My father had done it himself the spring he bought her from a dead man's widow in Stourport, and he never once explained it. It means we go the way the river goes, was all he would say, which was no answer at all.

Keep reading

We carried coal down the Severn and sand back up the Trent, and in those years a boat without a name was a boat the bailiffs could take. So the mark became our name. Men on the wharves learned to look for the arrow. A barge with that sign got let through the bad locks first, or loaded last and paid fair. The widow's son came down to the quay every Friday with a tin of oil for the engine, and he always touched his cap to the bow as if it were a church door.

The winter I was fourteen, my father slipped from the gunwale in the ice and the Wren drifted onto the weir with nobody at the tiller. I took her through alone in March, my hands raw, the curl rubbed nearly to nothing on the side I steered by. The lock keeper watched me come in. Without a word he took the brush from his hook and went over the arrow for me, pointing it steady down at the water.

I painted the mark fresh the spring I bought my own boat. When the new lock keeper asked what it meant, I told him it was the name, and I watched him try to say it.