Black serif lettering reading 'we are all earthlings' across a forearm, with a green top and a studio chair in the background.

Quote lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a forearm with two lines of black serif lettering, reading 'we are all earthlings', set one line above the other. The letters are solid black with clean edges and a slightly soft, traditional book-style typeface. The background shows a checkered floor, a black studio chair and a green top, with the photo taken at an angle from above.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text Lettering

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 order came up from the quay on a Tuesday, pencilled on the back of a chandler's invoice. Mr Ruddock handed it to me without lifting his eyes from the proofs. Two lines in the old book serif we kept for funerals and church notices: we are all earthlings. A hundred cards, cream stock, nothing else on the page.

Keep reading

I asked who had ordered it. He tapped the invoice with his pen. A woman off the Penzance boat, salt in her hair and a dog on a length of rope. She paid in silver and wouldn't say what the cards were for.

I set it letter by letter, picking each sort from the case by feel. The l and the h stand taller than their neighbours and kept snagging my thumb. In the composing stick the words lay backwards, like a rope knotted by someone in the dark, and I had to turn them over in my head before they made sense. When I pulled the first proof the ink sat black and even, serifs crisp as gull feet on wet sand.

She came back on Friday. She read the top card at the counter and laughed, short and surprised, as if someone had told her a joke she'd heard before. She slipped one into her coat and left the rest beside the dog's lead. That evening I found a worn lowercase e on the floor and kept it in my pocket, where its nicked edge pressed against my thumb whenever I reached for the next line.