Black ink tattoo of the word CREATE in bold letters over brush strokes and ink splatter on the upper arm.

Bold CREATE lettering with brush strokes

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo of the word CREATE in heavy black capitals runs across the skin, with the letters partly overlapped by sweeping black brush strokes. Ink splatter and dry-brush marks extend beyond the lettering on both sides. The work is entirely black and grey, with a slightly raised, healed look to the solid black areas.

Lettering Upper arm Word Brush stroke Ink splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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You will not believe what Mr Okonedo asked me to paint on the side of the old wool store. Just the one word, he said, in letters a man could read from the bridge. I told him I could do the C, R and E without thinking, but the A would need a steady hand and a bit of nerve. He laughed and said I had both, which is more than Father ever said.

I mixed the black from lamp soot and linseed the way Grandfather showed us, and the first stroke went on wet and too thick, so I let it run. Rain came in off the moor before I finished the T. I worked the last letters with the brush dripping, and the splatters are not mistakes, whatever Mrs Pryce at the post office says. She stood in the lane under her umbrella and said a proper sign has straight edges. I told her the wall had none to give me.

When the paint dried in the morning, the word looked as if it had been thrown at the bricks rather than written on them. People stopped on the bridge. A boy from the farm asked if it was a warning. I said it was an instruction, and he went off whistling it, which I count as success.

Mr Okonedo paid me double and asked for nothing else. I keep thinking of him saying that the word was the only thing in the village nobody had ever told him to stop doing. I have started a sketch of my own, a little bird with one wing too big. Come home at Easter and I will show you the wall before the weather takes it.

Your loving sister, Bea