Black and grey script lettering over a shaded block monogram on a forearm.

Script lettering over shaded monogram on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a black and grey tattoo on a forearm, with cursive script lettering laid over a large shaded block monogram. The script has bold, smooth linework, and soft grey shading sits behind the letters, fading into the skin at the edges of the monogram. The background shows white fabric and a blue and white checked surface, and another dark tattoo is partly visible at the bottom edge.

Lettering Forearm Script Lettering Monogram Initial

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Corrigan wanted the boat's name in gold leaf, but the gold had run short that week, so I lettered it in black enamel over the old block capitals my father had painted on the bow twenty years before. He had shaded those capitals the way he shaded everything, grey laid on thin and patient, each stroke fading into the white of the hull until you couldn't say where the paint stopped. I kept his shadow. You don't paint over a man's shadow just because the boat has changed hands.

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The script went on last, a quick pull of the brush from the top of the T down through the loops, fast where the wrist wanted to move and slow where the line had to hold. My father used to say script was only lettering with its hair let down. He thought the flourishes were a way of hiding poor spacing, and he was usually right, so I spent longer on the spacing than on the curls.

Corrigan came down the slip on the Thursday with his wife on his arm, and she stood a long while looking at the bow. She didn't ask about the grey. She asked whether the new name would cover the old one completely, and I said no, not completely, because the shadow had gone too deep into the wood to lift without taking the planks with it. She nodded as if that were the right answer.

That evening I wiped my brushes in the workshop sink and found my father's old ferrule still in the tin, bent flat at one side. I didn't throw it out. The Gull went down the slip on the morning tide with his capitals showing through my script like a hand under a glove.