Three black ink arrow designs drawn on paper in a fine line style, with chevron fletching, dotted shafts and solid or outlined arrowheads, suited to tattoo flash.

Three arrows drawn in black ink

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows three arrows drawn side by side in black ink on textured white paper. Each arrow has chevron or layered fletching at the top, a long straight shaft, small dot groups along the shaft, and a different arrowhead, one solid and two outlined. The linework is thin and even, with no shading or colour.

Fine line Arrow Arrowhead Fletching Feather 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

You are nine the August your uncle lets you fletch your first arrow at the scrubbed kitchen table, the window propped open on wasps and the sweet rot of windfalls under the Bramley. He pins the feathers flat with a splinter of hawthorn while you hold the shaft steady, and he shows you how the chevrons must lean back toward the nock or the arrow will wander in the air like a drunk man on the lane. Outside, the plums are going soft on the boughs and the grass between the trees has gone the colour of old straw.

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He has made three shafts that summer, all of ash he cut from the hedge by the mill. One carries a single black band where you can grip it, and he has ringed it with dots he says are for counting paces to the target. The other two have fletching in layers, and he files their heads himself from scrap, one solid and dark, the other hollow-cheeked and outlined so the light goes straight through the gaps. You ask which is the best. He says the one you can stop thinking about.

At the bottom of the orchard, where the rows give out into nettles, he hangs a tin bucket from a plum bough and tells you to shoot. Your first arrow goes wide and sinks into the grass with a soft thud. Your second hits the bucket and drops it. He laughs, not unkindly, and walks out to fetch the arrows, and when he comes back he hands you the one with the outlined head and the three dots near its grip.

You keep it on the windowsill for years after, and in every August the dots are still the first thing your thumb finds, the way you once counted your paces across the orchard floor before you knew how far a single shot could carry.