Fine line black script tattoo reading esse quam videri across the top of a bare foot, with dark painted toenails visible.

Latin script phrase across a foot

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A thin black script tattoo runs diagonally across the top of a bare foot, spelling out the Latin phrase esse quam videri. The linework is even and fine, with solid black ink and no shading. The skin is a warm tone against a grey carpet, and the toes are visible at the top of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Other Script Lettering Latin phrase Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The man wanted it in gold leaf, big enough to read from the car park, and I told him a motto that small didn't need gilding. Esse quam videri, he said, pleased with himself, as if he'd found it in a crossword. To be rather than to seem. He'd had it off a mug. I asked if he wanted it plain and he said plain, because he was a plain man, and it was the first honest thing anybody had said in the shop all week.

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I laid the name board on the trestle in the back room, where the light comes in sideways off the canal. My mother taught me the hand when I was nine, with a dip pen and a ruled sheet, and she made me loop the tails of the q and the r until they stopped wobbling. The trick with script is to let the line travel, not push it. You loosen the wrist and trust the stroke to hold its slope. Most men who come in want their words to stand up straight. Few want them to lean.

Halfway through the second word he came in with his coffee and watched over my shoulder. Could I make the letters heavier, so the weather wouldn't take them? I said no, the fine line was the line he'd asked for. He grumbled that nobody would notice. I said the boat would know, and he laughed, not sure if I was joking.

When the paint was dry I ran my thumb along the board. The strokes were so thin they vanished in the grain, and then the low sun caught them and they didn't. The phrase ran from one end to the other like something walking home. He paid in cash and didn't look at it again. I left the brush soaking in turpentine and stood on the towpath a while, watching the light slide off the letters.