Line art penguin, pine tree and fox tattoos

You will think me mad, but Master Hallam has finally let me sign the ledger. The rule of the house still stands: every drawing that leaves this workshop must be made in one unbroken line, pen never lifted, so a buyer can run a finger from nose to tail and find no join. I spent three weeks on the penguin alone, a stout bird from the ice shelf that the captain brought back packed in salt. Its beak runs out like a bowsprit, and I had to let the line double back under its own belly to close the feet without stopping.

The pine was easier, though the old man said it was cheating. One stroke up from the root, and the branches come off the trunk like the rungs of a ladder, each one drawn on the way down. He made me draw it three times before he would accept the trunk, which must run straight as a plumb line from the first mark to the last. I told him a straight line is the only honest thing a pen can do, and he said honesty was a poor thing to sell by the yard.

The fox was the trouble. The vixen who lived under the chapel steps had three kits and a bad hind leg, and I could not keep the line still long enough to settle her ear. I tore up four sheets. Hallam looked at the fifth, said nothing, and turned it upside down. Then he laughed and signed it beside the penguin.

I have been staring at my own hand since, wondering whether the trick is never to stop, or never to be sure where you began.

Yours in ink, Lewin