Cursive word between dashed lines on a forearm
Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo
A close photograph of a forearm showing a single cursive word in black ink, with a dashed line running off to each side. Below it near the wrist is a solid black chain-link band tattoo, and a silver wristwatch is worn on the same arm. The lettering is thin and crisp, the chain band uses denser shading, and the background is dark and softly out of focus.
Find an artist for thisTake 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
Mother never threw away the offcuts. She kept them in a biscuit tin under the stairs, long strips of pattern paper with dashed lines where the scissors were meant to go, and a word written across the middle in her slanted hand so she would know which piece was which. She wrote the same word on everything she meant to keep.
Keep reading
I was nine when I found the tin. Inside was a strip of brass links she'd drawn for a waistcoat nobody ever ordered. She let me have it on the condition that I cut along the dashes properly. I cut it crooked. She laughed, pinned it to the frame of the bathroom mirror anyway, and said a crooked line was still a line.
After the mill on Alfreton Road closed, the tin came to me with the old Singer and a box of bobbins that smelled of machine oil. The strip was still pinned up, gone yellow at the edges. I took it down and looked at the dashes properly for the first time. They weren't for cutting. She had drawn them to show where the thread should run, so that a thing could be taken apart and sewn back together without losing its shape.
I took the strip to a shop on the high street and asked the woman behind the counter for a stencil. I followed the dashes with the needle the way Mother had taught me, slowly, and I didn't cut anything at all.
More like this
From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.