Set of pencil lettering sketches for a tattoo design with decorative block and script letters, shaded ribbon banner and flourishes, shown without a body placement.

Lettering sketches with ribbon banner and flourishes

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image is a collage of hand-drawn lettering designs in pencil, showing several variations of the same phrase in block, script and ornate letterforms. Some versions use shading and a ribbon banner beneath the words, while others use fine outlines and swirling flourishes. The sketches are in greyscale and arranged in a stacked layout, with the final panel showing a close, angled view of a shaded drawing on paper.

Lettering Lettering Script Banner Ribbon Flourish Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sketch stayed pinned above my bench for three weeks before anyone asked what it was meant to say, and when Ada Marsh finally did, she had her reading glasses on the end of her nose and a tea towel over one shoulder.

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She ran the fishmonger's at the top of Gull Lane and wanted a board over her door that would make the gulls sulk. By then I had drawn the thing seven ways. The block capitals looked like a dockyard warning, the script like a wedding invitation. The third version had a ribbon beneath the letters that curled like a wave, and that was the one she tapped with a fingernail stained orange from the smoked haddock.

I shaded it for four nights by the paraffin lamp, cross-hatching each stroke so the letters seemed to stand off the board, and I lettered the small line underneath in the careful capitals my father taught me, I'M FASHION, with a tiny flourish at each full stop. Ada laughed until she had to sit on a crate of mackerel. Then she said the council man would have a fit, and that was exactly why she wanted it.

On Thursday the inspector came with his clipboard, read the board from the pavement, and went red to the ears. He demanded to see the manager. Ada walked him round the back, past the tray of ice, and told him she had the only sign on the lane that a man had spent a month drawing properly. He photographed it for his report and then bought a pound of cod. I still have the seventh draft in my drawer, and the ribbon is the only part I got right the first time.