Black linework flash drawing of a lace-edged heart with two script lettering banners and rays, drawn on tracing paper, suited to a neo-traditional tattoo.

Heart and script banners flash design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A line drawing of a heart with a scalloped lace border, overlapped by two ribbon banners carrying script lettering. Curled ribbon tails sit at the top left and bottom right, with radiating dotted rays behind them. Hatched lines shade parts of the ribbons and the tails, and the drawing is done in black ink on pale tracing paper.

Lettering Neo-trad Heart Banner Ribbon Script Lettering Ray

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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 lamp has to be wound by hand at dusk, and you are the only one left on Carrick Skerry to do it. The iron stairs are slick with spray and the brass key is cold enough to sting. Below, the sea keeps working at the rocks as if it has a grudge against them, and you have stopped taking it personally.

Keep reading

The supply boat comes on the first Tuesday of the month and leaves a tin box of tea, paraffin and post at the landing. You pretend you do not look for the envelope in blue ink. Your sister writes in capitals, the way she did when she was nine, and every line curls off the page like ribbon on a parcel. This month she has written that the chapel roof is down, that the gulls have taken over the bakery, and that she has finally stopped asking when you are coming home.

In the third week of November the mantle cracks and the beam goes dim. You climb the tower with a spare mantle in your coat and the wind trying to lift you off the gallery. For an hour your hands are the only light in the world. When the flame catches, the rays spin out across the water in their dotted spokes, and far off a fishing boat turns its bow toward you and steadies.

Later, with the tea gone cold, you unfold the blue letter again and read the last line twice. Then you open the clock case, slide the paper in beside the weights, and wind the lamp up once more, one turn for every word she wrote.