Two black Chinese characters tattooed on the inner wrist in a lettering style, photographed against a wooden background.

Two Chinese characters on the inner wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of two Chinese characters in black ink on the inner wrist of a light-skinned hand. The strokes are thin and even, with some variation in weight, and the characters sit side by side across the centre of the wrist. The background is a blurred warm brown surface, and the composition keeps the focus on the lettering.

Lettering Forearm Chinese character Script Wrist

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

The sailor came into the scrivener's shop on Quay Lane with his sleeve rolled to the elbow and asked me to copy two characters onto the inside of his wrist before the tide turned. I had only my letter-box ink and a fine nib, and I told him so. He said the nib would do. He had carried the characters folded in a tobacco tin since a stopover in Canton, and the paper had gone soft as cloth along the creases.

Keep reading

I drew the first character slowly, the way my tutor in Bristol had drawn them on my slate, counting strokes under my breath. My hand shook once, a hair's width at the hook, and he laughed and said the sea did that to everyone. The second character gave me less trouble, though its long falling stroke wanted more room than I had left it. I blotted the wrist with a clean rag, and he held it up to the window as if he expected the ink to lift off the skin like steam.

What he had not told me was that the tin held a letter of his own, written in the same hand that had first shown him the characters. He asked me to read it aloud, which I could not do with any confidence, so he read it himself, slowly, in a voice I had not heard from him before. It concerned a woman who kept a lamp burning on a headland for ships that were not coming.

When he left, the tide was already out and the ink on his wrist was drying the colour of a bruise. Afterwards I found the tin on the counter, and tucked behind his letter was a single character I had not copied, drawn in pencil by someone who had never set foot in our town. I did not know what it meant. I put it back where I found it, and kept the lamp lit in the window that night.