Forearm tattoo of red lips biting a black triangle, set within a sunburst of fine lines and a block-text quote, with soft watercolour washes.

Biting lips and triangle on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm tattoo shows red lips with white teeth biting down on an outlined black triangle, centred in a sunburst of radiating fine lines. Block capitals above read 'FOR ATTRACTIVE LIPS, SPEAK WORDS OF KINDNESS', and a faint line-drawn insect sits at the lower edge. The lips are shaded in red and the washes are blue and pink, with the linework in black, so the piece mixes colour and black ink.

Forearm Lip Teeth Triangle Sunburst Quote Text Insect Line drawing

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

Sit down by the stove, love, and mind the coal scuttle, it's been waiting since Tuesday for someone to trip over it. You want the story of the signal box at Coldharbour Halt? Good. Everybody round here knows the box, but they only know the bit about the fog. They don't know about Ada Crewe's mouth.

Keep reading

Ada worked the levers there for eleven winters, and she had a tongue on her like a broken bottle. She'd tell a driver his train was late before it had left the last station, and she'd tell the stationmaster his moustache looked like a dead stoat. Every night, while she pulled the points, she'd bite her bottom lip hard enough to leave a mark, because she knew what she'd said that day and couldn't take it back. The lamp above her table threw its light out in a fan of lines across the tracks, and on foggy nights you could watch the moths come in through the grime on the glass like they were trying to get at her words.

Then one February, with fog thick enough to chew, a lad called Teddy Morrow came up the steps with the goods timetable. He had a stammer, and he took his time. He told her the 9.14 was to go on the loop, not the main line, and before he'd finished she'd already thrown the wrong word at him, sharp as a slap. He didn't flinch. He just said, "Your hands are steady, Miss Crewe, even when your mouth isn't. I'd keep the hands." Then he waited, patient as you like, for her to look at the board again.

She looked. The loop was clear. The main line was not. She swung the lever and the goods rattled past onto the siding with a breath to spare. Ada sat very still with her lip bleeding a little, and in the morning she put a triangle of yellow paint on the post by the crossing as a reminder. Teddy never did finish his sentences, but he never needed to. And every foggy night after that, I'm told, Ada would watch the moths settle on the lamp glass and say something kind to the first one she saw.