Black and grey lettering tattoo across the back of a hand, mixing script and block capitals with shaded flourishes above the words.

Lettered phrase across the back of a hand

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a lettered phrase tattooed across the back of a hand, with the main words in bold script and a block-capital word set in the middle. The letters use solid black outlines with grey shading and sit among ornamental swirls and flourishes above and around the text. The image is close-cropped and evenly lit, with the ink fully in focus.

Lettering Hand Lettering Script Phrase Flourish Swirl

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 snow had buried the lane to the gatepost by the time the last coach passengers stamped inside, and you were the only one left at the bar pretending to read the reckoning. Marguerite Penhallow, who had kept the Fallow Hart for thirty-one winters, slid a second pint across the oak without asking. 'Drink that,' she said, 'then tell me again why you think the mail will get through in the morning.'

Keep reading

You had no answer, so you drank. Somewhere above, a door banged and a child started to wail, and the lamp over the hearth shivered in the draught that always came under the kitchen door. Through the small window you could see the painted board hanging over the porch, its swirled capitals gone grey with frost. Her husband had lettered it years ago, flourishes curling around a single blunt word in block capitals, and he had been so proud of those flourishes that nobody in three parishes had ever told him what the sentence underneath actually said.

'Our Edwin thought it was the finest joke in Devon,' she said, following your eyes. 'He wanted every drover to read it before they reached the door. Most of them did, and most of them laughed, and a few turned straight round and rode back to Exeter.'

At midnight the knocking came, slow and polite. Marguerite lifted the bar anyway. A young man stood in the drift with his hat in his hands and snow on his shoulders, squinting up at the board. He read it twice, then looked at her and grinned. 'Well,' he said, 'I suppose I'd better come in and say it to your face.'