Black and grey ship tattoo with flowing script on the upper thigh, with a hand with glitter ombre nails resting beside it.

Ship and script tattoo on a thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A hand with long, square-tipped nails finished in gold glitter ombre rests on skin beside a black and grey tattoo. The tattoo shows the outline of a sailing ship with bold dark strokes and fine script lettering running beneath it. Shading is soft against the skin, and the warm tones of the nails contrast with the monochrome ink.

Lettering Thigh Ship Sailing ship Script text Hand

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 rain has been coming sideways off the Channel since Tuesday, and by Thursday every lodger at Gull Rest has stopped asking when it will clear. You keep the register on the hall table, the brass bell by the stairs, and the drawer where people leave things they mean to come back for. Tonight the drawer holds a single glove, a sixpence, and a folded page torn from a ship's log.

Keep reading

Mr Harrow, in the back room with the blue wallpaper, came down at six with his valise and asked whether anyone had sent a letter for him. You told him no. That was true when you said it. The postman had left a thin envelope with a Plymouth postmark that morning, and you had tucked it behind the clock on the landing, meaning to hand it over at supper. You are still deciding whether holding it back was kindness or only cowardice dressed up as manners.

The page in the drawer is a pencil sketch of a barque, her sails shaded in with the side of the lead, and beneath her someone has written in a hurried hand: wait for the tide, I will come back by the lamp. You turn it over. The other side is a column of dates and a name you recognise from the stone on the headland, the one with the anchor carved worn almost smooth by wind.

At seven the rain stops as if someone has shut a tap. You climb the stairs, knock on the blue door and hold out the envelope. Mr Harrow reads it standing in the doorway, then laughs once, quietly, and folds it into his coat. Go on down, he says. The kettle won't boil itself. You go, and you leave the drawer open.