Black and grey script lettering reading Stop Watching and Start Doing inside a thin diamond outline on a forearm, in lettering style.

Stop Watching and Start Doing lettering

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads Stop Watching and Start Doing in flowing script, with the words stacked across a thin diamond-shaped outline. The linework is bold and even, with some subtle shading along the letter strokes. The image is black and white, and the tattoo is centred against smooth skin on the forearm.

Lettering Forearm Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The queue at the Varna crossing had not moved in three hours, and the man ahead of me had spent all of them staring at the barrier as if he could lift it by wanting to. I had my sign-writer's kit in the boot: sable brushes wrapped in chamois, a tin of one-shot enamel, a roll of stencil card. My father taught me that a sign is only a promise while the paint is still wet, and most people would rather wait for someone else to make it.

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The guard in the glass box had a moustache like a yard brush and a habit of tapping his pen against the desk. When my turn came he asked what I was carrying, and I told him the truth: lettering tools, a commission for a bakery on the far side of the river. He squinted at the boot. "Show me one." I pulled out the practice board I always carry and painted his name on it in four strokes while he watched, the I standing up straight, the L swinging out like a bird lifting off a wire. His badge said ILIE. I gave him the board.

He stopped tapping. Behind me a woman with a pram was shouting in a language I didn't know, and he waved me through without asking for my passport, which I still count as the best compliment I've ever been paid. "Stop watching," he said, nodding at the queue, "and start doing." Then he laughed at himself, as if he'd read it on a poster and forgotten where.

The bakery owner had a blank fascia waiting over the door, already primed. I started the first letter before my coat was off.