Small black fine line script lettering with a looping swash tail on the forearm near the wrist, in a black and white photo.

Small script lettering on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo of stylised lowercase lettering with a looping swash tail sits on the forearm close to the wrist. The linework is thin and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The photograph is black and white, with a plain pale background and a dark cuff at the bottom of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Letter Swash Swirl

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

Mr Okafor's letter arrived on a Tuesday, pinned under the brass weight of the counter bell, and Edith read it twice before she understood that the stationer's shop on Bellgate was hers to run now. Her father had taught her to cut nibs and mix oak-gall ink, but he had never taught her to refuse a customer. Customers came in with ledgers and envelopes and a single word they wanted engraved on a pocket watch, and she wrote whatever they asked in the same looping hand.

Keep reading

The woman who came in that October wanted only two letters. She laid a scrap of card on the counter, paid in advance, and asked for a lowercase l and e joined by a swash that ran off the edge of the paper like a dropped thread. Edith asked whose name it was. The woman said it was not a name yet, and that it would be when she had decided what came after.

Edith wrote it for her, twelve times, until the stroke came out the way the woman wanted: thin, unbroken, the tail lifting from the e and not quite leaving the page. The woman folded the card into her glove and left without asking for a receipt.

Afterwards Edith kept the spoilt sheets in a drawer beneath the ledger. In the spring a letter came from Lisbon in an unfamiliar hand, containing only a pressed sprig of rosemary and the same two letters, the tail running off the bottom of the page. Edith held it to the window for a long time, then fetched a clean nib and began the rest of the name.