White ink lettering tattoo reading Believe in flowing script with swirling flourishes on a forearm.

Believe script in white ink on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo spells the word Believe in a flowing script, with looping swashes extending beneath the letters. It is done in white ink, so the lines show as pale, slightly raised marks against the skin, and the lettering has smooth, even strokes with thicker and thinner sections. The word sits centrally on a plain, softly lit forearm against a light background.

Lettering Forearm Believe Script Word Swirl Flourishes

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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

Now you'll want to hush for this part, because the sea doesn't care to be talked about over the top of it. Forty years back the Brightwater fleet ran out of Shields with eleven boats, and every one had its name painted on the transom in black. Only the Margaret Ann had a word instead. Skipper Tom Dunning had his nephew paint BELIEVE across the wheelhouse in white lead, with curls underneath like the foam when a wave breaks flat.

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Folk laughed. Who puts a sentiment on a fishing boat? But Dunning said a man could look at a word at four in the morning, when his hands had gone numb on the winch, and it would be the one thing in the dark that wasn't moving.

The winter of the big gale, the fleet went out anyway, because the herring had come in thick and the wives were counting pennies. Ten boats came home. The Margaret Ann came home too, late and slow, her hull sprung along one plank and her paint gone grey with salt. Dunning stood at the wheel with the word still showing through the spray, pale as a bone.

Here's the thing, though. When they hauled her out, the lead had sunk into the grain, and the letters stood proud of the timber like a raised scar. Men still run a thumb over them when they pass the slipway. Not for luck, mind. Just to check it's still there.