Black script tattoo reading Family with the lines Where life begins and and love never ends beneath it, shown on upper back skin in a two-photo collage.

Family script tattoo on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo spells the word Family in flowing cursive lettering, with a small looped flourish above the F and a long tail under the y. Two lines of smaller script sit beneath it, reading Where life begins... and love never ends. The linework is fine and even, shaded in solid black ink with no colour, and the two photos show the same piece from slightly different angles.

Lettering Back Family Script Quote Love Life Flourish

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

The gold leaf refuses to lie flat when the air is wet, so you breathe on the board, lift the brush and wait. It is half past one on Hallam Street, the chip shop shutter is down and the rain has only just stopped. Your lamp throws a yellow circle on the hoarding, and inside that circle the word you have been painting since nine is starting to look like somebody else's handwriting.

Keep reading

The client wanted the old lettering kept exactly: the F with its curled top, the small loop above it like a thumbprint in wet paint, and the long tail of the y that dives under everything else. Nobody in this city still makes a tail like that. Your uncle Bart taught you to pull the brush from the wrist and never from the thumb, and to leave the loop until last so it looks thrown there rather than drawn.

The smaller lines go on in black enamel, steadier work. Where life begins, then the ellipsis you do with three careful dots, then and love never ends along the bottom, the tail of the y reaching down to meet it. A lad on a bike stops at the kerb and sounds the word out loud like a password, fam-i-ly, then asks why the y has to hang so low. You tell him it needs to reach far enough to hold on to the rest of the sentence.

When you switch the lamp off the word stays wet and bright under the streetlight, every stroke still shining. You stand back with the brush dripping onto your boots and realise the tail has run the full width of the board, and that you never once lifted the brush to make it stop.