Three illustrated arrow designs in a botanical and tribal style, decorated with leaves, feathers and swirls, shown on a white background as tattoo flash.

Three illustrated arrow tattoo designs

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

The image shows three arrow designs drawn as illustrations on a white background. The left arrow has green leaves and swirling vines, the centre arrow has striped wrapped shaft with orange feathers and dashed trailing lines, and the right arrow is black with leaves, tribal-style patterns and curling stems. The shapes are bold and hand-drawn with flat fills and simple linework, and the palette mixes green, teal, orange, pink and black.

Botanical Arrow Leaves Feather Vine Swirl Tribal pattern Dashed line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hedge at Coldharbour Lane had grown wrong that spring, and Nell Marrable knew it before the frost was off the gate. Hazel shoots bent towards the south wall as if pulled on a string, and the ivy had wrapped itself three times round the old ash stake her father drove in the year the bees swarmed. She cut the straightest shoots with the bread knife, because the good one had gone to sharpen the hook, and carried them in under her arm like kindling.

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Her uncle had fletched for the archery club at Hollin Green until his knuckles stiffened, and the shed still smelt of glue and goose quill. He laughed when she laid the shafts across the bench. "You'll not make arrows out of hedge rubbish," he said, but he watched her bind the first one with green thread, the wraps tight and even, then a band of red, then teal, then a ring of black where rowan juice had stained the twine. The leaves she tied on last, pressing each one flat with her thumb until the sap came through.

On the evening of the fair she loosed the arrow with the orange feathers, salvaged from a pheasant the fox had left, and it sailed low over the lane, trailing a dashed line of gold dust that caught the lamplight. Nobody saw where it came down. By morning the whole hedge had leafed out in a single night, and a new shoot stood against the wall with a black arrowhead and a spiral of dark vine curling up its length.

Her uncle came out with a lantern, looked at it for a long while, and went back to bed without a word. Nell left the last shoot unbound and hung the bread knife on its nail by the door, where it could keep watch over the lane.