Black and grey script lettering reading Dum Spiro Spero on an upper arm, with a dotwork stipple shading halo around the letters.

Dum Spiro Spero script lettering on upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows a photograph of an upper arm with the Latin phrase Dum Spiro Spero written in flowing script lettering. The letters are outlined and filled with solid black ink and grey shading, with a fine stippled dotwork halo spreading softly around the edges. The background is plain and dark, and the arm is lit evenly so the lettering stands out clearly.

Lettering Dotwork Upper arm Lettering Script Latin phrase

Find an artist for this

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

Sit down, you, and mind the stove, because this is the one about Tobias Rance and the sign he would not paint. He was a sign-writer in Porthaven, the kind who did boats' names in gold leaf on the transoms and the hotel boards above the quay, and he had the finest hand between Falmouth and the Scillies. Every fishing family wanted their name on the stern, and he gave each of them the same flourish, the long looping tails and the capitals that swung out like a gull's wings.

Keep reading

Then the lifeboat crew came up the hill one wet March with a request nobody liked. The old boat had gone down on the Mare's Tail, and the widow of the coxswain wanted something painted on the new hull, but not a name. Three words, she said, in the Latin her husband had cut into the bowl of his pipe. Tobias asked what they meant. She said, while I breathe, I hope.

He spent a week on the layout. Sand was the thing, he told the crew, sand worked into the paint so the letters seemed to hang in a haze of spray. Every night he came back to the workshop with a cramp in his wrist and his fingers grey with pigment, and every morning the words looked less like a promise and more like a dare.

On the last day the wind came round to the east and the crew launched the boat to try her. Tobias stood on the slip with his brush still wet, and when she came back in with all four men grinning, he saw the spray had settled over the letters exactly as he had meant it, soft at the edges and dark at the heart. He never painted another name after that. He said the sea had finished the job for him.