Black fine line script tattoo of a Bible verse across the upper back of a woman with dark wavy hair, placed horizontally between the shoulder blades.

Script verse across upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with dark wavy hair is photographed from behind, showing a horizontal line of black cursive script across her upper back, reading the verse ending in II Timothy 1:9. The lettering uses thin, even linework with no shading, and the ink is a dark grey-black against her skin. The text runs across the centre of a bare back, with a fine silver chain and a white lace dress visible below, in soft natural light.

Lettering Fine line Back Script Quote Bible verse Text

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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

Mr Ashdown would not let me hold a pen for the real work until I could write the same line three times and have it come out as one hand. Script, he said, forgives nothing. A wobble in a capital shows up like a dropped stitch. So I practised all that winter at the bench in the vestry at Thornbeck, with the damp coming up through the flags and the smell of wet slate hanging in my coat for weeks afterwards.

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The commission came in February, a headstone for a man named Tom Lowther, who had spent forty years building dry stone walls across the fell and had died, as far as anyone could tell, while mending one. His widow brought the verse on a folded page torn from her Bible, II Timothy, chapter one, verse nine. She wanted the words and the reference cut in the same hand, and she wanted the reference small, at the bottom, so that folk would have to lean in to find it.

Ashdown read the line aloud while I copied it. Not according to our works, he said, and grunted. That's the hard bit for a man who spent his life stacking stones that stayed put without mortar. Then he tapped the page and told me to get on with it. I drew the letters in pencil first, then chiselled them into the granite, still cold from the lorry.

When the last letter was cut, the light was going behind the church and the stone had turned the colour of pewter. The reference sat low and tight, almost hidden. I thought it was too modest and said so. Ashdown only shrugged and handed me a brush to clear the dust. Three weeks later the widow came back alone, knelt on the gravel, and ran her finger down the groove until it stopped at the numbers.