Two black script tattoos on the inside of the wrists, one reading El-Shaddai and the other Adonai, with two hands clasped together above them.

Matching wrist script tattoos reading El-Shaddai and Adonai

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two wrists are shown side by side, each with a single word in black cursive script: El-Shaddai on the left and Adonai on the right. The lettering uses fine, even linework with some soft shading, and the ink is crisp against the skin. The hands are pressed together in the background, and the plain, softly lit composition keeps the focus on the two words.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Script Wording Hand

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

The rain on Kirkgate had thinned to a mist by the time Ruth Calloway taped the stencil to the inside of the shop window. Behind her the bus shelter glowed empty, and her apprentice Sam stood with his hands in his coat pockets, watching her mix the last of the black enamel on a cracked saucer. He had asked twice already why the locksmith wanted two words and not one name. She had told him the owner was particular.

Keep reading

The words came from her grandmother's Bible, pencilled in the margin of Isaiah in a hand that leaned hard to the right. El-Shaddai, her grandmother had written, meaning the God who is enough, and beneath it Adonai, meaning my Lord. Ruth had never worked out whether the second was a comfort or a surrender. Her grandmother had said it was both, and that a person only needed the first word when they were carrying something too heavy to name.

She loaded the sable and drew the first letter in one breath, the long descending stroke of the E running past the glass edge. Sam leaned closer to see how she kept the curves so even. "You don't look at it," she said. "You look at where it's going to end up."

When the first word dried she painted the second smaller, tucked low in the corner where the streetlight could catch it. From the pavement, anyone walking past would read them backwards for a moment, then right way round, as if the glass had turned them over to show the truth. Ruth peeled the stencil away, wiped her fingers on a rag, and left the lights off.