Fine line black script reading smile, with a thin trailing line, across the upper arm of a person wearing a dark t-shirt.

Smile script on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A single word, smile, is written in thin black script across the outer upper arm, with a fine line running out from the final letter. The linework is even and delicate, with no shading. The skin tone is warm and the background is softly out of focus, keeping attention on the tattoo.

Fine line Lettering Upper arm Smile Script Word Line

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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

Dear Nell, the ferry from Carrow Quay is late again, so I have time to write properly. Mr Pascoe at the chandlery says my s loops like a dropped stitch, but I spent all winter copying your hand off the backs of the tide tables until my wrist remembered it without asking me.

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The word I want is the one I couldn't say at the harbour dance. Your father told me you'd stopped doing it since the Mary Ann failed to come back round the point, and I said nothing, because the only thing I've ever known how to do is draw. So I wrote it small under the tide table with the fine nib, and then the line ran on past the e because I couldn't bear to lift the pen and stop it.

Mum read it over the stove and said that isn't an instruction, it's a boat leaving harbour. She may be right. The stroke runs off the edge of the paper towards the window, and I have left the rest of it for you to finish, wherever you'd like it to end.

Yours, Hal