Black fine line script tattoo reading fearfully and wonderfully made, running diagonally along the inner forearm.

Script quote on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black script phrase, reading fearfully and wonderfully made, runs diagonally along the inner forearm. The thin, even linework has a handwritten, cursive quality with varied letter heights and connecting strokes. The tattoo is set against plain skin and a blurred, patterned fabric in muted purples, greens and greys.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Quote Phrase Handwriting

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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

Brother Anselm says my hand is too quick, that a copyist should let the pen wait for the letter to arrive. So I have been practising in the margins of the psalter, and the abbot's secretary has started calling me the boy who writes like a river. I am sending you this sheet because you asked what the scriptorium is like now that the frost has come, and because I want you to see the line I finally got right.

Keep reading

It is from the hundred and thirty-ninth psalm, the verse about being knit together in the womb. Brother Anselm read it aloud while we ground the ink, and when he came to fearfully and wonderfully made he stopped, set down his knife, and said the word fearfully was the hardest to draw because it had to lean back a little, as though it were shy of its own grandeur. I did not understand him until I tried. The f must loop like a question. The l's must stand tall, and the y must trail away down the page the way candle smoke does.

Yesterday I wrote it fourteen times. The fifteenth I did with my eyes shut, counting the strokes under my breath, and when I opened them the line ran slanting across the vellum, climbing at wonderfully and tumbling at made, exactly as Anselm said it should. He came and looked over my shoulder, said nothing, and then tapped the page once with his thumb, which is the most he has ever praised anything of mine.

Keep this. When you are back at the mill and your father shouts that your hands are only good for sacks, read it and remember that somebody thought them worth a careful line.