Black ink brush-style character tattoo on a woman's left ribs, photographed from the side with a black crop top and blonde hair visible.

Brush-style character on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A single bold black ink character sits on the side of the ribcage, with a thick, tapering stroke and a separate dot at the top. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the skin tone is warm against the dark ink. The subject is photographed from the side in a bathroom, with the face and head cropped out of frame.

Lettering Ribs Character Symbol Brush stroke

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

The ink master at Vell had one rule the apprentices recited before they were allowed near the seal paper: no royal stroke is ever lifted twice. So on the morning the river broke its banks over the lower market, you knelt on the scriptorium flagstones with the brush held above a single clean sheet, your wrist trembling so that the bristles shivered like reeds. Old Ansel Groot had gone down to the flood gates with the rest of the city, and the word on the sheet was pardon. Four dyers' sons were sitting in the Harrow gaol for burning a warehouse they had not burned, and the Queen's clerk wanted the sign by noon.

Keep reading

You set the brush down and lifted it again. The stroke came out long and heavy at the top, then drew thin and quick as it fell away, the way the old master had taught you to finish a word before the ink could think about spreading. It looked, you thought, like a man stepping off a boat. Then you reached for the small fine brush to add the dot above it, the mark that tells the reader where the sentence stops, and your hand hesitated, because the dot was not in the copybook. Nobody had told you to make it.

You made it anyway. The ink was still wet when the rider came through the courtyard gate, and by dusk the dyers' sons were walking out past the portcullis with their hats in their hands. Ansel returned the next morning, soaked to the knees, and studied the sheet for a long time. Then he tapped the dot with one knuckle. The seal needs a stop, he said, and nobody remembers who gave it one. Your fingers were still stained blue to the second knuckle, and you did not wash them for two days.