Red script lettering reading stay grindin across the back of a hand holding fanned banknotes, in a Lettering style, placed on the hand.

Script lettering on the back of a hand

Lettering · Hand · Colour · Photo

A hand holding a fan of US banknotes in front of a car steering wheel, with a red script tattoo reading stay grindin across the back of the hand and fingers. The lettering has bold, looping strokes with a decorative flourish at the start, and the ink is solid red with no visible shading. The composition is close and angled, with a gold wristwatch and green nails in the frame.

Lettering Hand Phrase Banknote

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 baker on Harrow Lane paid me in folded notes, a fan of them pushed across the counter with a flour thumbprint on the top one. He wanted his window lettered before the summer ended, in red, and he wanted it to say what he told every customer who came in before six: stay grindin. I said grindin was not a word a sign-writer put on glass without a second opinion. He laughed and said that was why he'd asked me.

Keep reading

I mixed the vermilion with a drop of linseed and worked the brush in long looping strokes, the way my father taught me, starting each capital with a curl like a dropped ribbon. The flourish on the S took most of a morning. Two lads from the garage opposite leaned on the wall and argued about whether the g should have a tail. I kept my tongue between my teeth, and when I stepped back the word looked like it had been shouting for years.

The turn came at five the next morning, when I walked past in the dark and saw him through the glass, sleeves shoved up, hauling trays from the oven. He had been up since two, and his knuckles were scalded pink. He wasn't grinding for pride. If he stopped, the ovens would go cold and the regulars would drift to the chain on the bypass. I stood on the pavement and understood the sign was not a boast. It was closer to a prayer.

I came back at noon with a rag and a tin of turps, meaning to scrape it clean and paint something gentler. Instead I left it. He came out wiping flour off his palms, read the glass, and said nothing for a long time. Then he peeled one note from the fan and pressed it into my hand. I bought a loaf with it and ate it on the step beneath the red loops, which were still tacky enough to take a thumbprint.