Black line drawing flash sheet of an ornate outlined alphabet, numerals, scrolls, daggers and a scroll banner, with no body placement shown.

Ornamental alphabet and numbers flash sheet

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

This flash sheet shows an outlined alphabet from A to Z and the numerals 0 to 9, drawn in a decorative old-style lettering with banded and shaded letterforms. Scrolling flourishes, two dagger designs and a tall scroll banner are arranged around the letters in a grid. The drawing uses black linework on a white background with no colour.

Lettering Traditional Alphabet Letter Number Numeral Scroll Banner Dagger Flourish

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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

Dear Nell, the name board on the Patience has come loose from the cabin side twice since Stourport, so this afternoon I sat in the lock-keeper's hut with a sheet of old-style flash Ackroyd left behind. Every capital has a band cut through its middle, like a parcel tied with string, and the numerals have little notches where the shading should go. I copied our boat's name in the outlined letters, P, A, T, I, E, N, C, E, and the E came out as fat as a coal sack. I'm not ashamed to say I practised it on the back of a tide table until my wrist ached.

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The scroll on that sheet is the part I liked best. It's tall and curled at both ends, like a chart a pilot would unroll on the wheelhouse floor. I traced it out and pinned it above the stove, and I've been writing the cargo manifest inside it: coal, eleven tons, for the Tipton yard, paid on Friday if the yard clerk is sober. The two daggers in the corner made Ackroyd laugh, because he says the dock lads scratch their sweethearts' initials beside them when they think nobody is watching.

Last night a boy from the next boat came along the towpath holding a scrap of card and asked if I could letter his name, Danny, the way the sheet shows. I gave him a D with a flourish swinging out like a fish's tail, and he went off grinning as if I'd handed him a shilling. After he'd gone I found myself wanting to do yours, but I don't know how you spell your married name now. Write it out in your own hand and send it on the next carrier. I'll put it inside that empty scroll above the stove, where the coal manifest is going to be, and it can stay there while we're both on the water. Your brother, Tom.