Black hand-lettered script reading "you fearfully are & wonderfully made" with "Psalm 139:14" set on an infinity-style swash, drawn on a plain white background.

Hand-lettered Psalm 139:14 quote with infinity swash

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink hand-lettered design of the phrase "you fearfully are & wonderfully made", with the words "Psalm 139:14" written inside a looping infinity-style swash beneath. The letterforms use a thick and thin brush contrast with flowing connecting strokes, and the design sits centred on plain white with no shading or colour.

Lettering Scripture Quote Infinity Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brush has to be loaded just so, Mr Pardoe used to say, or the stroke comes out fat where it ought to thin, and a boat named after somebody's mother looks like it was christened by a drunk. I was fifteen that spring and had only been allowed to chalk names on the sheds. But when the Gull Ellen came up the slip at Porthkerris with her transom bare, he handed me the mahl stick and told me to keep my elbow still.

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Before any paint touched the wood, he wrote the verse out on a scrap of board. The owner's daughter had asked for it, and Pardoe had firm views on what a man's hand ought to carry. You fearfully are and wonderfully made. He would not start a word until the whole line sat right, and he made me copy each capital until my wrist ached. Then he drew the loop beneath the psalm reference in one unbroken pull. Never lift, he said. A good swash is a boat turning round in harbour and finding its own mooring again.

The Gull Ellen went out in February with the Dunstan brothers aboard and did not come back to the slip. Her name stayed on the transom, weathered but legible, for three winters more, until the yard was sold for flats.

The board is still in my drawer. The loop is the same as it was, with no join where his brush came back to the start. I take it out when a new boat comes in and I need to remember how to lift the brush slowly.