Black ink drawing of an ornate uppercase A and lowercase a in flourished lettering, with grunge speckle, styled as a lettering design, not shown on skin.

Decorative Aa lettering design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a stylised uppercase A and lowercase a in a flourished, calligraphic script, drawn in solid black on a white background. The strokes vary in thickness and end in curled swashes, and a few horizontal lines and scattered specks add a distressed texture. It is a black and grey graphic design with no body part visible.

Lettering Script lettering Swash Splatter

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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

Dear Marguerite, I have finished the sign for the printer's window at last, and I am sorry it took me the whole of February. The capital came out first, as it always does, standing tall like a man who has been asked to carry a ladder up a hill. Its left leg kept sliding off the baseline and I had to coax it back with the tip of the brush, a little at a time, until the crossbar stretched out and curled at the end like a cat deciding whether to stay on the sill.

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The small a was harder. I drew it three times on the back of the invoices before I trusted it. The bowl had to look full without looking fat, and the tail had to hook round and down as if it were reaching for something it had dropped under the counter. Mr Halloran came in on the Thursday and stood over the board with his hat in his hands, and he said nothing for so long that I began to hear the kettle downstairs. Then he asked whether I had meant the spatter. I told him the spatter was the ink remembering it had been a cloth, which made him laugh, though I had not meant it as a joke.

He paid me in shillings and a jar of quince paste. I am writing because the sign goes up on Monday and I wanted someone to know that the first letter in the window is not really an A. It is the shape of the word you once said to me across the wet paint, and I have been trying to get it right ever since.