Close crop of a woman's left forearm with fine black script lettering tattooed along the inner arm, wearing a white vest top and yellow pleated skirt.

Script lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop shows a woman in a white tank top, brown belt, yellow pleated skirt and pendant necklace, with one hand in her skirt pocket. A small black script tattoo runs vertically along her forearm, drawn in fine, even linework. The palette is neutral, with the white top and yellow skirt the dominant colours of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Script Word Necklace Pendant

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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

Mum, the rain has got into the paint again, so the sign for the Thursday stall came out running like a bruise. I've scraped it back and started over, which is why this letter is late and why my hands smell of turpentine. Mr Oduya says he can't pay me for the lettering until the sign is right, so I am writing it out in full on the back of the tally sheet first, to practise the curves.

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Halfway down the sheet I found a line I didn't write. Someone at the market had copied out a sentence from your last letter, the one about Grandad's boat and the tide tables, and left it pinned under the tin of nails. The ink had bled into the grain where the wet had got at it, but every letter was still there, upright and careful, the way you taught me to close a loop before I knew what a loop was for.

I took it to the old storyteller who sits under the arcade by the fish hall, the one with the brass cough and the coat full of ticket stubs. He read it aloud in that slow voice of his, so the traders stopped shouting to listen, and when he reached the last line he tapped the paper twice and said nobody writes a sentence that straight unless they mean to keep it.

So I'm keeping it. The sign can wait a day. Tell Grandad the tide turns at four on Saturday, and I'll be on the harbour wall with a clean page and a pencil behind my ear.