Beautiful in fine line script on a forearm
Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo
The tattoo reads the word beautiful in a flowing, joined cursive script that rises diagonally across the skin. The linework is thin and even, with the letters varying slightly in height and weight. The ink is solid black on pale skin, and the soft-focus background keeps attention on the lettering.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The rain has been coming sideways across Chapel Row market since seven, and you have been crouched under the lip of a tarpaulin with a lettering brush, trying to make a word lean the right way. Dessie Rowntree wants her new board for the greengrocer's end to say BEAUTIFUL in gold leaf, and she wants it to look as if someone dashed it off on a whim. You have never been able to do whim on demand.
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Your first attempts come out stiff, each letter standing to attention like a queue outside the post office. Dessie walks down with her umbrella furled under one arm and tuts. She takes the brush from your hand, dips it in the size, and without looking up she rolls her wrist. The B swings off the board, the rest of the word follows at a slant, and the final l climbs like a ladder propped against a wall. The stroke runs thin where the brush lifts and fat where it lingers. "You don't write it," she says. "You let it run out of your hand."
You practise on the back of a crate for an hour while the stalls pack up around you: pigeons, a van reversing with its beeper going, the smell of wet cardboard and oranges gone soft. By the time the arcade lights come on, the word is leaning the way Dessie's did, and the rain has eased long enough for you to see yourself in a puddle, bent over the board, with nowhere else you would rather be.
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