Close-up photo of a tattoo on skin showing the word Survivor in black script with a pink awareness ribbon and red shading behind it, in lettering style.

Survivor script with pink awareness ribbon

Lettering · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a pink awareness ribbon with a loop at the top and two tails crossing below, overlaid with the word Survivor in flowing black script. A swash line sweeps beneath the lettering and ends in curls on both sides. The ribbon is shaded in pink and red with a soft highlight, and a red offset shadow sits behind the script, while the lettering and swash are solid black linework.

Lettering Ribbon Awareness ribbon Script Swash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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Don't touch the Pearson's window until the size-ten gold has cured overnight, whatever Mrs Pearson says about opening on Monday. I know you think the swash is the hard bit. It isn't. The hard bit is the shadow. Lay the red offset behind every letter first, a finger's width down and to the left, or the black will sit on the glass like a dead fly and nobody will read it as movement.

I finished the ribbon panel for the Ardley Street hall this afternoon, the one for the nurses' fundraiser. Pink along the bottom of the board, deeper red where the loops fold over, and a thin white highlight on the left tail so it looks like it's catching the light off the harbour. Then the word across the middle. Mrs Ardley wanted SURVIVOR in capitals. I told her capitals would kill the curl, so we settled on a flowing hand, the sort you'd find on a ship's transom, with the long tail of the S running under everything like a mooring line.

She stood by the easel with her gloves in one hand and didn't say anything for a while. Then she asked whether the swash could go a little further to the right, so it ran off the edge of the board. I said it could. It's the only time all month I've been glad to be asked for more.

Keep the brush clean for the gilding on Friday, and leave the lamp on the bench, not the floor.

Yours, Walter