Pencil sketch of an ornate key with the word Honesty in cursive script across its shaft, drawn on paper as a tattoo design.

Honesty key pencil sketch

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a key with a plain rectangular bit on the left and a scrolled, filigree bow on the right. The cursive word Honesty runs along the shaft between the two ends. The lines are fine and mostly uniform with light shading, shown in greyscale on a warm, textured paper background.

Lettering Key Filigree Sketch

Find an artist for this

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 key had been in the biscuit tin since before Margaret's husband died, wrapped in a handkerchief that smelled of Imperial Leather. Nobody in the house knew what it opened. Her grandson Tom turned it over on the kitchen table while the kettle ticked, reading the word down the shaft as if it were a label. Honesty, he said. Is that a lock or a sentiment?

Keep reading

She took the tea from him and didn't answer straight away. The bow was a fancy thing, scrolled like a fire escape on a Victorian terrace, and the bit at the other end was plain, a flat block with two notches, the sort of key you'd cut in an afternoon in a shed. She had always thought it looked unfinished. Her husband used to say a key was only ever half of something, the other half being whatever you'd been too frightened to put behind a door.

The spare room was full of boxes she had been meaning to sort since March. Tom wanted the bureau cleared. She went to the drawer she had never once opened in front of him and found a brass padlock with no hasp, and fitted the key to it. It turned with a sound like a cough. Inside was a letter in his neat capitals, dated 1979, saying he had taken the money from the Co-op float and would pay it back by Christmas, and that he was sorry, and that he would tell her himself when he found the nerve.

She read it twice, then put the kettle back on and called Tom in from the garden. Some things, she said, ought to be finished at the table.