Black and grey script lettering spans the upper chest and shoulders, with a shaded cross emblem at the centre, on a shirtless man.

Script lettering across upper chest

Lettering · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of ornate script lettering runs across the upper chest and onto the shoulders. A shaded cross sits at the centre of the lettering, above the sternum, with soft grey shading around its edges. The photograph is taken straight on and cropped below the chin, so the wearer's face is not shown.

Lettering Chest Shoulder Script Cross Lettering

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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

The brush is still wet when the lorry driver knocks on the cab window, so you wipe your hands on your overalls before you lean out. He wants the gate letters done before the border men come at six, the ones that tell drivers which lane is which. You have painted nothing but shop fronts in this town for eleven years, but Mr Abernethy's old sign-writing manual lies open on the bench, and the script on its yellowed page is the same looping hand you have been copying since you were fourteen.

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Past the customs hut the ground is grey with dust and the fence wire hums in the wind. Nobody in the queue looks up. A woman in a red anorak reads a paperback while her boy presses his nose to the van window. You work the capital slowly, pulling the hairline up and over so it curls like a ribbon someone has let go of, and the paint thins as the sun climbs.

The cross is the part people ask about. Abernethy taught you to shade it last, never first, so the light seems to come from one side and the metal looks as if it could be lifted off the board. You did the same for the clerk's letterhead stamp in spring, and she held it up to the window for a long time before she said she would rather keep it than sell it.

At six the first lorry rolls under the barrier and the lane letters catch the lamplight, black on white, every stroke leaning the same way. The driver flashes his headlights at you. You raise a hand, and in the wing mirror you catch the word you finished last, looping over the dust as though it was always there, waiting for someone to read it.