Fine line black script tattoo reading free across the back of a hand, resting on a shoulder in a denim shirt.

Free script on the back of a hand

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small black tattoo of the word free written in a thin, flowing script across the back of a hand. The hand rests on a bare shoulder, and the lines are fine and even with light shading, with the tattoo sitting in the centre of the frame. The warm, muted tones of the skin, denim shirt and turquoise jewellery contrast with the single dark ink.

Fine line Lettering Hand Free Script Word

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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

Uncle Walt wrote the word on the back of his hand every morning in blue biro before he climbed the steps to Ashgate box. Nobody asked him why. The signal rules were printed on card above the levers, and the card said what it said, but Walt liked to glance down at his knuckles between trains and see the one thing he was waiting for.

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The word was FREE, in capitals he could barely read by the afternoon when the sweat had smudged it. Mum said he'd get blood poisoning. Walt said the ink had never once let him down. He had spent thirty-one years watching the section between Ashgate and Lowmoor, and he knew that a clear line meant a train could go, and a train going was a whole life moving forward at the speed of a timetable.

When he retired, the lads at the depot chipped in for a proper tattooist in Doncaster. I held the torch while the needle went in, the script trailing across the back of his hand in the thinnest line anyone could manage. He flinched once, then laughed at himself. 'Now I can't rub it off,' he said, and sounded pleased about it.

The last evening he came back to the box to say goodbye, the 4.10 ran through without a check. He held his hand up to the window so the lamp caught the ink, and we watched the red tail lamps shrink towards the north. Then he slid the hand into his coat pocket, the way you'd tuck away a thing you no longer needed to read.