Fine line black tattoo of a giraffe formed from the words stand tall, placed on the upper back near the shoulder.

Giraffe made of script on the shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a giraffe outline with its body and neck drawn from the lettering of the words stand tall in thin script. The linework is clean and single-weight in black ink, with no shading or fill. The subject is photographed from behind against a dark background, with a striped top in the lower right of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Shoulder Giraffe Script Text

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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 water tank at Anand Reach had a giraffe drawn on its flank in a hand so thin the crew took it for wiring, and for three weeks we argued over what it meant while the dust came in off the flats. Ines wanted it as a waypoint. Dov said it was graffiti from some bored contractor. I was the only one who had kept my grandmother's script primer, so I got the lamp and the job.

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Up close the animal was made of letters. The long body was the word stand, bent at the hips, and the neck climbed through the last of the word tall, its head a small sharp knot where the crossbar of the t sat. I read it aloud twice, the way you read a sign to a child, and the flaking paint seemed to lift a little under the lamp, as if the animal had been waiting for someone to say its name properly.

Dov laughed and asked whether it was an instruction or a dare. Ines, quieter, said the lettering was older than the tank, that someone had written the words first and then drawn the beast out of them so they would keep standing. We pumped the cistern that night and found it full, which none of the readouts had predicted.

In the morning the storm line stood on the horizon like a wall, and the giraffe on the tank was the only thing above it. I put my hand flat on the cold metal beside its neck and read the words once more, slowly, and felt the old advice settle in my spine: stand tall, and let the dust do what it likes.