Black handwritten lettering reading "you are art" across a person's inner forearm, near the wrist, in a fine line lettering style.

Handwritten "you are art" on the forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm with the words "you are art" written in small, thin black handwritten lettering running across the skin towards the wrist. The linework is even and fine, with no shading, and the ink appears dark and crisp against the skin. The sleeve of a grey top and a khaki jacket frame the lower part of the image, with the tattoo placed at the centre.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Lettering Word Script Quote 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

By October the big top has more patches than canvas, and Mr Dacre counts the takings in the caravan each night with the door shut. You are the only one left who can still letter a board properly, so every Thursday you climb the ladder with a tin of black enamel and a brush worn down to a whisker, painting the next town's name over the last one's.

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The trapeze girl, Ines, stops at the foot of the ladder one wet afternoon with her coat slung over her shoulders and asks what you are writing on the back of the wagon. Nothing, you say. Just a line for nobody. She reads it aloud anyway, slowly, the way she reads notices pinned in the post office, and says it sounds like something you'd find painted on a bakery window in a town with no bakery left.

On the last night, in Ashby, the ponies are led out for a crowd of forty people and a dog. You don't go in. You stand by the wagon with the brush still in your hand and watch Ines climb the rigging, and when she reaches the top and hangs there, arms open, she looks down at you and mouths the words back, as though she has been carrying them up with her all along.

The next morning the wagon goes to a scrap yard in Leeds with the lettering still tacky. You keep the brush. Some evenings you still write the words small on the back of a cigarette packet, just to watch them dry.