Black script lettering design where the word Love is formed from the text of John 3:16, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Love lettering with John 3:16 verse

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing of the word Love, with the large letters built from flowing cursive script that spells out John 3:16. The verse text runs along the strokes and the reference John 3:16 sits in the lower right corner. The linework is bold and uniform on a plain white background, with no shading or colour.

Lettering Love Bible verse Script Calligraphy

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ray never let me lift the brush until the stroke was finished, however much my wrist complained. 'A tail that stops is a tail that gives up,' he said, tapping my knuckles with the handle. We were working on a commission from a Mrs Gillespie in Whitby, who wanted the word Love painted across the back wall of her late husband's boatshed. She had brought her own text folded inside a Bible that smelt of fish oil and pipe smoke.

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She would not let us paint it plain. The verse had to run through the letters, so the big curl of the L carried 'For God so loved the world' and the o swallowed 'whosoever believeth'. Ray grumbled about the spacing for three days. On the fourth he sat on an upturned crate and copied the lines out again, slower, and I saw that he was keeping every word at the same thickness as the last, so nothing shouted and nothing faded.

When the lettering was done, Mrs Gillespie stood on the slip with one hand on the doorframe and read it aloud, all the way round, from the first swash of the cursive down to the small reference in the corner. She got to 'should not perish' and stopped. Ray began packing the brushes into their tin. I asked her what she wanted people to notice first. She said the sentence was a long walk and the word on the wall was only the front door, and she wanted strangers to come in and find the rest for themselves.

We left the paint to dry overnight. By morning the Love looked as though it had been written in one breath, and the John 3:16 sat in the corner like a boat's name on a stern, small and certain. I still have the crate.