Hand-drawn black ink lettering sheet of the numbers 0 to 9, an exclamation mark and an ampersand, in a decorative lettering style suitable as tattoo flash.

Hand-drawn numerals and symbols sheet

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a sheet of twelve hand-drawn characters arranged in three rows: the numerals 1 to 9, the numeral 0, an exclamation mark and an ampersand. Each character has a bold, sketchy black outline with decorative swirls, flared terminals and inner strokes that suggest a vintage display lettering style. The background is plain white, with no colour and no shading, and the characters are evenly spaced.

Lettering Number Numeral Ampersand Lettering Sketch

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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 board had been primed for three days before Ada Pennick got the order, and by then the chandler, Mr Hollis, had changed his mind twice about what it should say. Ballast, lamp oil, rope by the fathom. He wanted the prices large enough to read from the tram stop, and he wanted them in the old flourished hand his father had used, the one with swirled tails on every figure.

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She sat on an upturned crate with the board across her knees and chalked the numerals first, one to nine and the nought, then the little bang of an exclamation mark he insisted on for the sale sign, and last the ampersand, which she liked best. Her master had taught her that a flourish was a promise to the eye. Go round once more than you need, he said, and the customer stops to see what you were up to.

Hollis came in at dusk with his coat over his arm and found her not painting. She had the brush loaded and nothing on the board. 'Three shillings for the oil,' he said. 'Where's the three?' She pointed at the chalk. 'Your father's three curls back like a fishhook. Mine goes straight through, the way the price is.' He grumbled and stood a long while with his hands in his pockets, looking at the figures, and then he nodded once without saying so.

She finished by the last of the light. When the paint was dry the chandler's boy came out on the step and counted the day's coppers against the board, one finger at a time, stopping at each swirl as if it were a stair. The ampersand caught the lamp in the window and held it a moment longer than the rest.