Black line drawing of a bold, graffiti-style word with a rising sun, clouds, flowers, feathers and a bird, designed as a lettering piece for a tattoo.

Bubble lettering with sun, clouds and flowers

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of a stylised word in thick, looping lettering, with a sun rising behind it and a cloud on the left. Flowers, feathers, a small bird and a butterfly fill the gaps between the letters and along the edges. The work uses clean outlines with some inner hatching and patterning on the letters, and no shading or colour.

Lettering Botanical Lettering Word Sun Cloud Flower Feather Bird Butterfly

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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 have been up the ladder since the bells for Lowmoor's last hoarding, and the paint is already tacky in the heat. Mistress Oda says the letters must be tall enough to read from the water, because the ferries come in on the tide and nobody aboard them has seen a proper word in nine years. You hold the brush the way she taught you, loose at the wrist, and begin the loop of the first letter, which must swing like a rope someone has thrown.

Keep reading

Below you the harbour is grey with silt. Gulls work the rooftops around the old church, whose clock has stopped at ten past four. Oda climbs up with a tin of gold leaf and a bag of seed packets. "Sun first," she says, "people always want the sun first." You paint the rays one by one, fanning out behind the word, then a cloud blown sideways across the top. She tucks a butterfly into the gap between two letters, no bigger than your thumbnail, and tells you a painter should always leave one thing that flies.

By noon the lettering stands whole, its strokes thick and clean, hatched inside with bands of stripe so the glare off the water cannot swallow it. Feathers curl out from the bottom of the word, and a small bird perches on the curve of the first letter as though it had always been there. Oda wipes her hands on a rag and reads the word aloud once, slowly, the way the old people used to read notices pinned to the gate.

The first ferry sounds its horn. Somewhere on deck a child is leaning over the rail, squinting up at the wall and trying to make out the shapes. You watch the child lift one hand toward the sun you painted, and you understand you have been waiting all morning for exactly that.