Fine black line tattoo of the state of California with the word California in script inside the outline, on the inner upper arm.

California state outline with script lettering on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a thin black outline of the state of California, with the word California written in flowing cursive script across its width. The linework is clean and even, with no shading, so the design reads as solid black ink on a light skin tone. It is photographed close up on the inner upper arm against a white sheet, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Upper arm State outline Map Script Lettering Word

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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

Mr Aldous Penhale had been ruling lines in the cargo book since Gravesend, and by the fortieth day off the Horn his hand no longer shook when the ship lurched. The hold held flour, picks, and a crate of Staffordshire crockery that had cracked on the second night. Captain Rourke wanted the book fair-copied before they raised the Golden Gate, every entry in ink and nothing blotted by salt.

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On the last page, where no one would think to look, Aldous drew the coast as he remembered it from a chart he had copied at the Admiralty office. The first outline came out crooked, so he tried again, and then a third time, until the land had a square northern jaw and a long tongue running south. Inside it he wanted a name that would not run. His mother had taught him to join her letters with a looped pen so the words hung together like washing on a line. He wrote California across the middle in that hand, the capital C curling round like a fist closing on a rope.

Rourke found him at the rail at dusk and asked what he was about. Aldous showed him the page. The captain held it to the lamp, frowned at the drawing, then at the word, and said the thing was not in the cargo book and never would be. Aldous agreed that it was not. Rourke folded the page in four and slid it into his own coat, and said nothing more about it.

The fog lifted before dawn. The land was there, a grey smudge that looked nothing like the drawing, with no curl to its edges and no name written across it. Aldous stood with the ink still on his cuff and understood that the page in the captain's coat was the only true map of the place he would ever make.