White ink lettering tattoo reading Believe, with swirling flourishes, on the forearm.

Believe script on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the word Believe written in flowing script across the forearm, with looping swirls extending beneath the lettering. The linework is fine and even, and the tattoo is done in white ink that shows as a pale raised-looking outline against the skin. The composition is centred and straight-on, with the text filling most of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Believe Script Lettering Swirl Flourish Word

Find an artist for this

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 Tom,

Keep reading

The boats came in late again on Tuesday, and I stood on the slipway with the lamp until my hands went numb. Mr Gillies at the shop says the weather will turn by the weekend, but he said that about the last three weekends too. I have been doing what Dad taught me before his chest went. The lime wash is the cheap stuff from Oban, mixed thin so it runs, and the brush has to be loaded just so or the loops go blotchy.

I painted the word on the harbour wall again this morning. You will laugh, but I made the capital B the way he did, with the long top stroke that comes round like a fishing line being reeled in. The swirls underneath I left to the wind. Every winter the sea takes the bottom flourish first, then the tail of the e, and by March the whole thing is a ghost you have to squint at. I do not mind. The point was never that it stayed.

Mrs Ross asked me yesterday whether I thought you would come home for the Feast. I said I was not in the business of predicting ships. She laughed, and then she looked at the wall, and she said it was a daft word to paint where the whole island had to walk past it every morning. I told her that was exactly why.

The tide is turning and my fingers are cracked from the lime. Come back when you can. The swirl under the e is finished now, and I have saved you the last of the white for the sign over the door.

Love, Agnes