Pencil sketch on lined paper of a plain outlined cross with the words Philippians and 4:13 in script lettering, drawn as a tattoo design with no body placement shown.

Philippians 4:13 script and cross sketch

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a simple outlined cross, with the word Philippians in flowing script running along the crossbar and the numerals 4:13 in a bold, upright hand on the upper arm of the cross. The linework is clean and even, with light shading and a few smudges, and the drawing sits on a sheet of ruled notebook paper photographed at an angle. The image is entirely greyscale.

Lettering Cross Script Bible verse Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Harold had been told his capitals were too fat for a funeral parlour, so Mags sent him back to the notebook with a ruler and a hard pencil. Every evening that October he filled a page with the same cross, the upright sitting a finger's width off centre, and every morning she held the page up to the window of the Co-op on Market Street and frowned at it.

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"Crossbar's wandering," she said on the Thursday. "Your Philippians is leaning like a drunk at a bus stop. Do it again."

He did it again. The lettering he had learned from a library book, a copperplate that looped its tails under the line and came back up. The figures he made stern and square, because the numbers on the church noticeboard had always looked as if they were standing to attention. By the time the frost came he could do the whole thing blind, and Mags said so, which was how he knew she was being kind.

On the last Saturday before the shop closed for winter, a man came in with a sheet of paper folded in four. He wanted the words copied onto a board for his daughter's first flat, a plain plaque to hang above a door that stuck in wet weather. Harold took the pencil and kept his eyes on the strokes while he worked, pressing gently, lifting, letting the crossbar hold its line.

The board went up that week in the rain. Mags wiped her hands on her apron and said the upright was true at last. Harold, who had stopped counting the spoiled sheets, walked home with graphite on his knuckles and a pencil behind each ear, and he did not look back at the shop window once.