Close view of a white t-shirt printed with black line drawings of hands holding cigarettes, beside a forearm with small black script lettering and a tiny hand tattoo.

Hand-print tee with script forearm tattoos

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A person wears a white t-shirt printed with black outline drawings of hands, some holding cigarettes, and rolled sleeves. On the bare forearm and upper arm are small black tattoos, including script lettering and a dark star-like motif, plus a tiny cross-like mark on a finger. The image is in colour with a green lawn background, and the tattoos are shown in black ink only.

Lettering Forearm Upper arm Hand Hand Cigarette Script Star T-shirt Lettering

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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

Dear Tom, the hands came back from the printers with the outlines slightly doubled, so every fingernail looks as if a second, nervous pencil nudged it. Mr Pryce says nobody will notice on a shirt. I noticed. I have been noticing things all week, ever since you left the drawer open and the old sitting-book slid out onto the floor.

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The book is what I wanted to tell you about. Forty-one pages of hands, drawn from life in the back room on Dean Street, every one belonging to a sitter who would not give a name but would give a hand. A man who held his cigarette the way a conductor holds a baton. A girl with a bitten thumb who asked me to draw it smaller than it was. Mr Pryce sold the sketches to the shirt company for four pounds apiece, and I have been paying the rent from the difference.

Yesterday a boy came in wanting a small star inked beside his wrist and asked whether I would draw his name under it. I told him I only draw other people's hands. He laughed and said it was the most honest thing anyone had said to him all summer, then held out his palm, unhurried, as if he had nowhere else to be. I traced it. The pencil was warm from my fingers, and the lines came out true the first time, which has never happened to me before.

I am enclosing the last sheet. It is the one with the cigarette lit, drawn so faint you can barely see the smoke. Keep it. When you come home I will show you which hands on the shirt are mine and which belong to strangers, and you can guess, the way we used to guess at Christmas, and I will let you win.