Fine line tattoo of the quote 'How strange it is to be anything at all' inside a black scrollwork frame, on the lower leg.

Swirl-framed quote on a calf

Fine line · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A fine line tattoo on the lower leg reads 'HOW STRANGE IT IS TO BE ANYTHING AT ALL' in capital letters, set within a rounded frame of black curling scrollwork. The linework is thin and even, and the ink is solid black with no shading or colour. The design is centred on the photographed leg against a dark, plain background.

Fine line Lettering Calf Quote Text Scrollwork Swirl Frame

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

In the kingdom of Hollin Vale, where the river ran backward every seventh year, a scrivener named Piet Harrow was paid to copy the king's laws onto calfskin. He wrote a fine, even hand and curled the tails of his letters into vines, because the scrivener before him had done the same and nobody had asked him to stop.

Keep reading

One winter the king's daughter, Ysolde, came down to the scriptorium with snow on her hood. She had walked the frozen mill pond that morning and watched a moth beat itself against a lantern on the ice. "Tell me, scrivener," she said, "how strange it is to be anything at all." Piet had no answer. He sat with his pen dry for three days and ate only bread crusts while the ink thickened in the pot.

On the fourth morning he brought her a single sheet. The words stood in plain capitals inside a ring of black scrollwork, every curl closed so the eye could rest in it. "I cannot answer your question," he said. "So I have drawn a fence around it, so it cannot wander off in the night."

Ysolde laughed, then hung the sheet in her east window where the lantern light could reach it. Each winter after, the frost grew into the same ring on the glass, and the people of Hollin Vale said the princess had her answer, though none of them could read it. Piet kept his pen, and the moths kept coming to the glass.