Fountain pen nib on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo of a fountain pen nib sits on a pale forearm. It is drawn with a clean, even outline and a single slit line with a dot at the tip, and the collar and feed at the base are shown in simple solid shapes. The arm fills the left and centre of the frame against a dark top and dark trousers.

Fine line Forearm

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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

You are copying the Saturday bill by lamplight in the back of the big top, though the big top has more holes than canvas now. The ink has thickened to the colour of stewed tea, and you keep the nib in your mouth between lines to warm it. Mr Corrigan wants the word spectacular on every board, and you have run out of honest ways to say it.

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Outside, the wagons sit in a wet field outside Settle. Pearl the elephant went to a farm in March, and the posters still promise her, so you paint a grey shape beside the words and hope nobody counts the legs. The clowns have started sleeping in the ticket booth for the warmth. The strongman's wife sells raffle tickets for a pig nobody has seen. Your father used to say a good nib would outlive the show if you looked after it, and this one is older than the tent poles.

In the first season the queue ran past the gasworks, and the sawdust smelled of oranges and sweat. Now the bill is one sheet, folded twice, and you write: Twelve acts, one ticket, no refunds. The steel scratches on the cartridge paper like a mouse under the floor.

A girl from the tightrope family comes in at dusk with a stub of pencil and her own name written on the back of a envelope. She asks if you could write it in the ring, where the lights used to fall, so her grandmother can see it from the stands. You take the lamp outside, dip the nib, and print her name in letters as tall as a man, the ink running easily for once.