Two black and grey arrow tattoos on a person's inner forearms, one a stacked geometric arrow with dotwork shading and the other a single shaded arrow, against a white patterned top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two arrow tattoos on forearms

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of two forearms, each carrying an arrow tattoo. The left forearm has a vertical stack of geometric arrowheads and fletchings with diamond and dot motifs, built up with fine dotwork and soft grey shading. The right forearm shows a single long arrow with layered feather fletching and solid black shading, set against a white top with a black patterned print.

Dotwork Geometric Forearm Arrow Diamond Dot Feather

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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

Dear Maud, the Hythe boat came through the lock this morning with the old tally board still nailed to her cabin door, and I stood on the gate and counted every chalk mark on it the way Dad used to, one stroke per lock, until I reached the bottom row where he'd scratched a little diamond beside the last of them. You'll remember he never once said what it meant.

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He drew arrows for everything, didn't he? The one he carved into the tiller was for going straight. The stack of barbed heads pinned under the stove was for the three weirs he swore he'd never forgive. And the long one, feathers cut thin as paper, he kept for the day one of us left the cut for good. He never said that either. I found the pattern folded inside his tin of rivets, traced in pencil on the back of an old delivery note, and I've been carrying it about since Tuesday.

So I took the pencil to the two of us in the kitchen last night. Your long arrow goes on the right, pointing where the river runs, and mine stacks up on the left, all those little diamonds for every lock we worked through together, ten years of them. Mum said we were daft to make ink of a dead man's joke. I told her the joke was the point, that the river never tells you which way you're going, only which way it's pulling. Come home at Easter and we'll get the boat out. I have kept your place on the towpath.

Nell