Black ink geometric arrow tattoo with diamond tips and chevron lines, running vertically down the centre of a back between dark strap lines.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Vertical arrow and geometric lines on upper back

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical tattoo of an arrow-like motif sits along the centre of the back, with a small diamond shape at each end and a stack of diagonal chevron lines in the middle. The linework is clean and fairly fine, and the ink is solid black with no shading. The photo is framed tightly on the skin, with two dark straps crossing either side of the design.

Geometric Fine line Back Arrow Diamond Chevron Geometric line

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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 Hild, the abbot has at last let me rule the lines for the great psalter, and I have been at it since Lauds with a bone point and a board of pricked holes. You will laugh, but ruling is harder than writing. Every line must run true from the head of the page to the foot, and the spacing must not drift by the width of a hair, or the letters will sit crooked for a hundred years.

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Brother Osgar, who keeps the fletching shed below the gate, came up yesterday with shafts for the hunting lodge. He saw my pattern sheet on the bench and held it to the window. He said it was an arrow with its head to the north, the feathers cut into chevrons, and a diamond at each end where the pin and the nock would sit. He asked who had drawn it. I told him I had, copying a charter Father Wulf brought back from the fen. He shook his head and said no fletcher would ever waste a good shaft on ink.

I did not tell him that Edmer took the Carlisle road three winters ago with a satchel of our ledgers and a promise to write before Candlemas. There has been no letter. Each evening I go to the scriptorium and take up the sheet and look at the arrow, because it was the only thing I could make steady in a world that would not stay still.

So tonight I have finished the last line, and I have drawn the arrow pointing south, down the valley and over the ford, the way a sensible man would walk if he were trying to find us. I know it is foolish. The ink is dry and the page is ruled true. Pray for me, and for Edmer, who I think will not read this, but who will know which way to come.