French script quote along the side ribs
Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo
A vertical line of cursive French script runs down the side of a torso, just below the ribcage. The linework is thin and even, with the letters in black ink and little visible shading. The warm-lit skin and blue ribbons held at the hips sit around the tattoo, which is the clear focus of the frame.
Find an artist for thisTake 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 ink in the second bottle has thickened again, so forgive the blots. Monsieur Lacroix says a copyist who complains about her pen should be grateful she has one, and I suppose he is right, though he has never tried to write a clean line with a nib that wants to drink from the bottle.
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Yesterday a man off the Newhaven packet came into the shop with a folded sampler and asked for its words to be written out thin and upright, the way the tattooer on the Quai Henri likes them, so the needle can follow a clean line. The sampler had been stitched by his grandmother the winter his grandfather was lost off Ushant. The letters had faded to the colour of weak tea. It said Je souffrirai tout pour ceux que j'aime, and he told me, not looking at me, that the tattooer would stencil it wherever he wished. I did not ask where. I wrote it out four times before the nib sat right.
I kept the sampler back while I worked, and when the copies were done I held it up to the window to see the old stitches against the light. Monsieur would have scolded me for the time, but the letters leaned the way her hand must have leaned, toward the sea, as if she had been setting down the shape of a wind.
Write when the boats are in, Jean, and tell me whether the ink holds. I will know it is yours by the way the vowels lean.
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