Close-up of a thin black fine line tattoo of a city skyline with a tall spire on the upper arm, below a blue t-shirt sleeve.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

City skyline line tattoo on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A single black line traces a city skyline with several rectangular blocks and a tall central spire rising to a point. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the design is in one ink colour. The tattoo sits across the upper arm, with the blue t-shirt sleeve at the top and a blurred yellow background on the right.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I have finished the drawing you asked for, though not the way you wanted it. You said a single line, unbroken, the whole city from the river bend out to the gasworks, and I laughed because nobody draws a city without lifting the pen. But I sat at the kitchen table on Tuesday with a fine nib and the ruler I borrowed from the hardware shop, and I found the line would hold if I let it climb the way the old spire does, slow at first and then all at once.

Keep reading

The blocks came easily. Mr Okafor's flats went in as four stepped boxes, and the chimney stacks by the gasworks became small teeth along the bottom edge. I kept the spire for last, because you always said it was the only thing up there that looked as if it was reaching for something rather than just standing about. Each time I lifted the nib to clear a smudge, I had to start the whole climb again from the shoulder of the roofs, and by the fourth attempt my hand had learned the angle better than I had.

You will want to know why I posted it to you before you had seen it. I didn't mean to. The line runs off the edge of the page on the right, where the gasworks should stop it, and I have left it running. It is the first drawing I have ever made that doesn't stop anywhere.

Come and see the original on Sunday. Bring the ruler back, I still owe the hardware man a shilling.

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