Fine line black script tattoo spelling the word smile across the inner wrist, with a green sleeve at the left edge of the frame.

Smile script tattoo on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single thin black line forms the word smile in flowing cursive script, running horizontally across the inner wrist and extending past both sides of the lettering. The linework is even and delicate, with no shading, and the ink is solid black on pale skin. The plain light background and green fabric on the left keep the focus on the tattoo.

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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

You have been painting shop signs under the tarpaulin at Bramley Yard market since seven, and the rain has been coming sideways off the moor all morning, finding every gap in the canvas. Your fingers are numb around the brush. Mrs Abaya from the cheese stall wants a board for her window, something to cheer the queue, and she has given you one word and a look that says she has already decided you will get it wrong.

Keep reading

Your old teacher, Walter, used to say a line that lifts from the board is a line that has doubted itself. So you load the brush once, rest your hand on a folded tea towel, and begin at the left. The s curls up like a question. The m is a hill you cross without stopping. You do not lift the brush for the l, or the e, and when the final tail runs off the edge of the board and keeps going, you let it.

Rain rattles the tarpaulin hard enough to drown the stallholders' calls. Mrs Abaya squints at the board, then at you, then back at the board. "It's just a line," she says. "It's just the word." You tell her that is the trick of it. The word is only what a line is willing to hold.

When the paint dries, the rain beads on it and rolls off without a smudge. She hangs it facing the street, and by noon a stranger has stopped to read it twice.

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