Black lettering tattoo of a Van Gogh quote set in a simple hand-drawn typeface, running down the shin or calf.

Van Gogh quote on a lower leg

Lettering · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a multi-line quotation tattooed vertically down the outer lower leg, reading 'For my part I know nothing with any certainty but the sight of the stars makes me dream' with the attribution 'Van Gogh' below. The text is set in a thin, hand-drawn sans serif in black ink with clean, even linework and no shading. The wearer is standing on a wooden floor in strappy sandals and a pale skirt, and the tattoo fills the centre of the frame.

Lettering Calf Quote Text Star Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hettie, the snow has sealed the coach road now, and Mrs Pardoe has given me the attic room over the taproom, which is warm enough if I keep the chimney breast at my back. I am writing by one candle and the last of the ink, so forgive the blots.

Keep reading

Last night the cloud finally tore open, and I went out to the yard in Father's old coat to see what the frost had done. Every drystone wall had a white spine. Above the byre the sky was packed so thick with stars that I could not find the Plough at first. Mr Ackroyd, the carrier who has been stranded with us since Tuesday, came out with a lantern and named the ones he knew, which were not the names in the almanac. He said the almanac men had never once been out in a blizzard, and I think that is unfair to them.

He had a battered book of letters that a pedlar left behind, and he read me a line from it by the lantern, something about knowing nothing for certain except that the stars make a man dream. I laughed at him, because he reads the way a sermon is delivered. Then I stopped laughing, because it was exactly what I had been feeling since the coach ran into the drift outside Settle and I was certain we would all be found in March.

The thaw is forecast for Thursday. Mr Ackroyd has promised to carry this letter down to the post at Hawes himself, so you will have it before the lambs. Keep the lamp lit for me on the landing. I will count the stars again tonight and tell you how many I got wrong.