Close up of a fine line black script tattoo reading 'i am fearfully and wonderfully made' along a forearm, with a pearl bracelet at the wrist.

Fine line script quote on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A thin black cursive script reads 'i am fearfully and wonderfully made' running diagonally across the inner forearm of a light-skinned person. The linework is delicate and even, with the lettering set in a single line that rises towards the elbow. The soft, warm-toned photograph shows a pearl bracelet at the wrist and a floral patterned fabric in the lower part of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Quote Lettering

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

In Orrendale the ink-houses keep their doors open to the salt wind, and my father, Tobiah Crane, kept his lettering bench under the window so the light fell on the nib. The commission came on a wet Thursday from a clerk of the harbour court, who wanted a single line running up the inside of a brass clasp, rising towards the hinge. He had written the words himself on a scrap of vellum: i am fearfully and wonderfully made. My father read them twice and said nothing, which in our house meant he disliked them.

Keep reading

I was seventeen and thought I knew better. I took the scrap while he was at the tannery and practised the line until my wrist ached, letting each letter lean a little further than his would, until the whole phrase ran uphill like a boat trying to reach the quay. When he came back I had a stack of attempts on the bench and the one I liked best pinned to the lamp. He looked at it for a long time, then at the pearl bracelet my mother had left on the hook by the door, its clasp still green from the sea.

He did not praise it. He took the brass clasp, dipped the finest nib he owned, and wrote my line exactly as I had drawn it, leaning and rising, then turned the clasp to me and said the clerk would never know which of us had done it. That was the whole of his blessing. The clerk came on Saturday, paid in silver, and asked whether the phrase was meant to be sung. My father said it was meant to be read slowly.

After the clerk left, I went down to the harbour with the bracelet in my pocket and watched the tide climb the steps. The clasp was in the court by then, closing a letter for someone I would never meet. Behind me my father swept the shavings into the stove, humming, badly, a tune with no words at all.