Black ink flash design of a cartoon mouse figure built from calligraphic loops and flourishes, shown on a white background with no body placement.

Calligraphic flourish mouse design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The design shows a cartoon mouse figure with round ears, a head and a seated body, formed from thick and thin calligraphic loops and swirling strokes. It is drawn in solid black on a white background, with no shading beyond the tapering of the strokes. The composition is centred and fills most of the frame, with the flourishes forming the ears, face and feet.

Lettering Mouse Cartoon character Flourish Calligraphy

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dilys had been on the obs round for twenty minutes before she noticed the pen in her top pocket had leaked again, blue ink soaking through the cuff of her cardigan. Ward 7 was quiet except for the drip pump in bay three, which kept announcing a bubble nobody could find. She pulled a fresh sheet of the drug charts toward her, because Kofi in bed nine had asked her at teatime to draw him something that could climb.

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She drew it the way her father had taught her to letter shopfronts in Margate: one heavy downstroke, then a hairline that thinned out as if it was running short of breath. Round ears first, two open loops made from the letter O, because it was the only shape she trusted at three in the morning. The face came next, a swirl for the nose that curled back on itself, then the body folded up and sitting, with a tail she let run off the edge of the paper as if it had somewhere else to be.

Kofi was asleep when she brought it in, so she taped it to the bed table where he would see it at six. The pump in bay three stopped beeping. She stood at the window and watched the car park lights go off one by one as the cleaners left, and thought about how little a mouse needed in order to be recognised: two circles, a loop, a line that did not quite close.

At handover the day sister found the drawing still taped there, the tail curling over the table edge. She laughed quietly and said the boy would want to keep it. Dilys signed the chart and said nothing, because the mouse was already his.