Black and grey tattoo of a looped star emblem above the words 'never give in' in script, on the forearm.

Looped star emblem with 'never give in' script

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black star made of interlocking looped outlines sits above the handwritten phrase 'never give in' in a flowing script. The linework is solid and heavy with little shading, and the design is centred on pale skin against a dark background. The image is greyscale, with the emblem and text filling the frame.

Lettering Geometric Forearm Star Loop Script Emblem

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

Now then, shift your feet out of the gutter, because the rain has found the low end of the market again and it will not be talked out of it. Sit where you can see my hands. I am going to tell you about Mabel Trent, who sold darning wool and bootlaces from a trestle by the fish stalls for forty years, and about the winter the river came up over the cobbles.

Keep reading

The river took her stall in the night, and with it the tin box where she kept every scrap of ribbon her mother had ever knotted. Come morning she stood in the mud with a single length of black cord that had washed up against the fishmonger's drain. She knotted it, and then she knotted it again, looping the cord back on itself, five times around, until a star sat in her palm, all rounded arches and no loose ends. A man in a sodden greatcoat asked her what it was worth. She said it was worth the next hour, and that was the only price she ever set.

Times got worse before they got better. The bank wanted its letters answered, the fishmonger's boy wanted his wages, and Mabel had only the cord and her stubbornness. Each time the water rose or a door was shut in her face, she pressed her thumb into the star's centre and said the words her mother used to say over the washing line: never give in. Some of you think that is a small thing to say to a river.

The river went down in April. The star is still in the back of a drawer in the chandler's shop, and he will show it to you for a penny if you ask him nicely and do not drip on the counter. The rain has eased for now, so off you go, and mind the drain on your way past the fish.