Blue and black shield tattoo with the letters W and B on the inner forearm, with a black and grey sketch tattoo above it.

Blue shield logo on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm showing a large shield-shaped emblem with the letters W and B in solid blue ink, outlined in black. A second black and grey tattoo sits above it, showing a sketchy, shaded image that is hard to make out. The blue fill and black linework are crisp, and the emblem fills most of the frame against a dark, softly lit background.

Forearm Shield Logo Letter Emblem Sketch

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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

You learn the projector on the Lyric in your first week, because the ferry only comes on Tuesdays and nobody on the island can fix anything else. Mr Abernethy shows you where the film cans sit in the cool room behind the gents, each one stamped with a blue shield and two letters in its centre, the crest of the company in Los Angeles that made the pictures. He says the crest is the only thing those people ever sent that didn't arrive late.

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The reels come over on the boat in a crate that smells of diesel and wet cardboard. You thread them by hand, count the cue marks by torchlight, and the island turns out for the Thursday double bill: fishermen still in their boots, two nurses from the mainland clinic, the minister's children who sit in the front row and crack boiled sweets loudly through the love scenes. The picture is always a few seconds behind the sound. You learn to listen for the flutter in the gate and correct for it with your thumb.

In October the crate arrives with the second reel missing. The label says part two, in someone else's handwriting. You ring the depot, the skipper shrugs down the crackling line, and Mrs Gunn at the post office says her sister in Stornoway has the same picture on a thing called video. So you open with the first reel alone, and when the lights come up at the cliffhanger, a boy of nine asks whether the hero survives. You tell him that is a question for next week, and you watch him decide to believe you.

The reel turns up in March, in a fish box, wrapped in oilskin, with a pencil note tucked under the lid: lost in the hold, sorry, keep the crest polished. That night you wipe the tin lid with a rag until the blue shield catches the lamp, then thread the second reel by hand while the wind leans on the shutters and the empty seats wait for the ending.