Black lettering tattoos on a forearm, including KEEP GRL PWR with a small arrow, and a script line near the wrist, shown beside a woman in a white printed t-shirt.

Lettering tattoos on a forearm and upper arm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman in a white t-shirt with a black and white mandala print stands with her arm visible. On her forearm are small black ink words reading KEEP and GRL PWR beside a small arrow, with a script tattoo near the wrist. A sleeve of darker black and grey tattoo work sits on the upper arm at the right edge of the frame, partly cropped, and the image is bright with a plain background.

Lettering Forearm Upper arm Lettering Arrow Script Quote

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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

Mrs Adeyemi wanted KEEP OUT across the back door of the bakery, and she wanted it in gold, so Tamsin spent the whole Tuesday thinning the size with a drop of oil and waiting for it to go tacky. She had painted shopfronts along the Margate front for eleven years and knew the trick of the second coat: lay it too early and it smudges, too late and it won't take. The light off the harbour told her when.

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When she came back from her lunch, the flour bin lid had been written on in biro. Someone had drawn a small arrow, neat as a dart, pointing at the brass bell above the door, and beside it, in capitals that leaned like they were in a hurry, the words GRL PWR. Kwame, the baker's grandson, was sitting on the step with his feet in a bucket of sand, pretending he had nothing to do with it.

"It's mine," he said. "The arrow. It's so people know where the bell is."

Tamsin looked at the arrow for a long time. Then she took the gold leaf she had set aside for the lettering and used it on the arrow instead, one careful sliver at a time, so the little thing shone on the bin lid like a fish scale. Mrs Adeyemi came out with the till float under her arm, read the bin, and laughed until she had to sit down on the step beside the boy.

The sign on the door says KEEP OUT to this day, with a faded gold arrow underneath that points at the bell, and nobody in Margate has ever wanted to argue with it.