Fine-line black script lettering tattoo on the back of a person's neck, just behind the ear, with dark hair pinned up.

Fine script lettering on the back of the neck

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small word in thin, cursive black script sits on the nape of the neck, angling slightly upwards towards the ear. The linework is delicate and even, with no visible shading, and the ink appears dark grey to black against the skin. The dark purple hair pinned up with a gold bobby pin frames the tattoo, and the face is not shown.

Fine line Lettering Neck Script Word Lettering

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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

The gold leaf tin had gone cold by the time Mr Abernethy's shop sign was finished, and I was still up the ladder at half past two, tongue between my teeth, working the last loop of a word nobody on Cable Street would read until the shutters went up. The streetlamp outside buzzed orange on the wet pavement. A night bus sighed past and rocked the ladder, and I held my breath and kept the brush steady.

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He taught me in these hours, when the city was too tired to watch us work. Script was a fool's job, he always said, because a fine line shows every tremor in the hand, and you have to decide before you start that you will not flinch. Once, after the phone call from the hospice, my hand jumped and I left a blot like a fly on the glass. He didn't scold me. He just handed me a rag and said, slower this time, love, the letter isn't going anywhere.

The word was his, copied from a card he had carried in his breast pocket for forty years, soft as cloth at the corners. I had traced it so many times on scrap board that my wrist knew the shape before my eyes did. The thin tail curled up towards the corner where the sign met the brickwork, the way he'd drawn it on every window in the street.

At six, the first van pulled in and its driver stopped, a flask in one hand, and read the window out loud, letter by letter, slowly, the way Abernethy taught me to read anything worth reading. He nodded at the end, as though it had been addressed to him, and I locked up and went home with gold on my cuffs.