Close-up of a fine line gold script tattoo reading be happy with a trailing underline on the outer upper arm.

Gold script "be happy" on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A thin gold script reading be happy runs across the outer upper arm, with the final letters trailing into a long, unbroken underline. The linework is delicate and even, with no shading, and the metallic ink stands out against warm skin. The arm fills most of the frame, with a patterned, loose-fitting sleeve draped over the top left of the shot.

Fine line Lettering Upper arm Script Word Quote

Find an artist for this

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

Brother Osric had been told by the abbot that a scribe who copies only psalms will grow as grey as his ink. So through the winter, when the cold came off the fens, he began lettering small things in the margins of the book of hours, things nobody had asked for: a snail, a dropped glove, the word for bread in three tongues.

Keep reading

The abbot found the margins and was not pleased. "Gold is for the Gospels," he said, holding a leaf up to the candle, "not for idle words." Osric said nothing. He had beaten the gold himself, thin enough to see the flame through, and he had kept back the last scrap on the end of his brush.

Years later a carter's daughter came to the gate with a bundle of wet linen and a fever in her brother. The monks were turning travellers away that season, but the porter let her wait by the wall. Osric came out with bread and found her looking at the book on the step where he had left it open. A line of gold ran along the margin, off the edge of the page and past it, as though the pen had not wanted to stop.

She read it aloud slowly, the way children read in a language they are still learning. "Be happy." Then she laughed, which Osric had not expected, and asked whether it was a prayer or an order. He said he did not know, only that it was the one line he had made that winter he did not have to be sorry for. She took the bread and went down the road, and the gold caught the low sun all the way to the bend.