Black fine line lettering spelling LOVE on a forearm, with the O replaced by a smiley face with X eyes and a small star cluster beside it.

LOVE lettering with a smiley face as the O

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo spells the word LOVE in bold black block lettering across the skin. The O is replaced by a circle with a smiley face, with X-shaped eyes and a wide grin, and three small star shapes sit along its lower left edge. The black ink is solid and crisp against the skin, and the word fills the width of a narrow section of arm in a straight, centred composition.

Lettering Forearm Love Smiley face Star Lettering Word

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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

Dennis had painted shopfronts along the Margate front for thirty-one years, and nobody had ever asked him to put a face in a letter. So when Priya Ansell, the new owner of the arcade, stood in his workshop doorway holding a biro sketch of a grinning circle, he set down his mahl stick and sighed. 'Love,' she said, tapping the paper. 'Like that. Only the O's the face.'

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He worked it out on lining paper over three evenings. The L came first, heavy and plain. The O took him longest. He drew the circle with a brass compass that had belonged to his father, then the eyes, two crossed strokes that looked like a sailor's wink gone wrong. The grin he got right on the second go. The three stars along the lower left were Priya's idea, and he said so plainly, but she held firm and they stayed.

The V was the trouble. Up the stepladder with the one-shot enamel, he kept wanting to make it sit square, and kept not doing it, because the letters were already leaning towards the sea and it seemed rude to straighten them. The E went on quick. By dusk the word ran across the window, black and solid, and the grin caught the last of the light off the promenade.

Priya came out with two teas and looked up for a long time. 'It's daft,' she said. 'Isn't it.' Dennis wiped his brush on a rag. 'It's sign-writing,' he said. 'Daft's the whole job.' She didn't laugh, but she left the second cup on the step for him, and he drank it looking at the grin until the streetlamp buzzed on.