Black lettering tattoo reading I am all made out of shipwrecks in a typewriter style on the inner upper arm, with a knitted sleeve pushed up above it.

Quote lettering on an upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black ink quote tattoo across two lines on the inner arm, set in a typewriter-style serif font with the word shipwrecks sitting on the lower line. The lines are crisp and even, and the skin shows light texture around the lettering. The sleeve of a beige knitted jumper is rolled above the tattoo, and the soft, muted background keeps the focus on the text.

Lettering Upper arm Quote Text Typewriter font

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 wind came off the mole the way it always did in February, rattling the shutters of Pell's Quay chandlery as I sorted the stock. My uncle Dennis kept a biscuit tin of typed cards in the back office, each one a line he'd copied from a book he never finished. He typed them on an old Imperial with a dropped e, because he said a sentence tasted better through a ribbon.

Keep reading

The winter the Marigold Rose went onto the Scar, Dennis went out with the salvage crew for six weeks. He came back with a crate of brass portholes, a ship's bell with no clapper, and a cough he never shook. Nobody asked what else he'd brought home. I found the card after the funeral, one line typed across two, the last word dropped low where the keys had jammed.

I took it to the harbour office to ask Mrs Abney what it meant. She read it twice, then laughed the way people do at a graveside. "Your uncle thought a man was only the sum of what he'd pulled out of the water," she said. "Every mast cut free, every name he'd lost to the tide."

I pinned the card above the bell on the chandlery wall, where the morning light comes through the salt-smeared window and catches the uneven letters. The tin stays open on the counter. Whoever clears this shop next will find the rest of his lines, and I expect they will read them with the same sour amusement I did.