Close photo of the words 'This is not for you.' tattooed in black typewriter-style lettering across the upper back.

Typewriter-style quote on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows a single line of black lettering reading 'This is not for you.' in a typewriter-style font, placed across the skin of the upper back. The letters are crisp and evenly spaced, with solid black ink and little shading. The warm, slightly orange skin tone and soft focus of the photo sit behind the text, with dark fabric visible at the top edge.

Lettering Back Text Quote Typewriter font

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 typewriter came with the shop when Dad sold us the lease, a grey office machine with a ribbon gone the colour of weak tea. Nobody used it. So when I found a sheet rolled into it on the marble at ten to four this morning, with flour still hanging in the lamplight, I assumed Gran had been in again. She has a key and a habit of tidying.

Keep reading

The sheet read, in capitals that had hit the paper hard: THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. Someone had pressed the keys again and again, until the page was pocked with the same sentence and the last full stop had torn through. I stood there with the first tray of tins in my hands, listening to the ovens tick up to heat, and felt like a child caught reading someone else's post.

By six the rye was out and cooling on the racks. Tom in the green coat came to the back door for the day-old loaves, as he does every Saturday. He glanced past me at the typewriter through the open kitchen door. He took his sack, nodded at the page in my hand, and said, "She wrote that for the bank manager, you know. Years back. He never came in again." Then he was off down the lane with the bread under his arm, and I was left holding the question.

I folded the sheet into his sack beside the warm loaf, where the crust would keep it dry, and went back to the ovens. They needed me more than the note did.