Black fine line infinity symbol with the word family written in script across its loop, tattooed on skin in a lettering style.

Infinity symbol with family script

Fine line · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a single infinity symbol tattoo in which the word family is written in cursive script through the centre of the loop. The linework is thin, even and dark black, with smooth curves and no shading. The ink sits on warm, evenly lit skin against a plain background, and the design is centred and fills most of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Infinity Family Script Symbol Word

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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

You have spent three mornings failing at the same loop. Brother Anselm sets his knife down on the scriptorium bench, licks a thumb, and wipes a blot from the page before it can spread into the gospel of Matthew. The ribbon you were drawing has crossed itself at the centre and lies there like a dropped string. Your hand is steady enough now. The ink is oak gall and soot, dark and even, but the shape keeps closing too early or falling open at the far end.

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The widow's letter is still folded under the inkwell. Her husband is dead, her sons are at sea, and she wants a name set in the margin of the book the abbey is binding for the cathedral, a line that goes round and round without end. She does not say how it should look. She only writes that she would like it to come back to the same place.

You try once more, starting at the left lobe, sweeping right, crossing the middle where the two halves meet, and then you stop with the pen hovering above the vellum. Anselm is watching over his spectacles. Put the word there, he says, in the crossing. Let the letters carry the lines. Every time the pen comes round, it passes through the same few letters, and none of them can be left out.

You write it slowly, the f rising through the crossing, then the a, m, i, l, and y, each one sitting where the loop turns back on itself. The y's tail sweeps down, under, and up to meet the first stroke of the f. When you lift the nib the ink is still wet at the knot, and Anselm leans in, breathes out, and says nothing at all, which from him is praise.