Realism style tattoo of a black acoustic guitar with a red rose and leaves on the upper arm.

Acoustic guitar and red rose on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large tattoo of a black acoustic guitar runs down the upper arm, with its neck angled upward and a red rose wrapped around the headstock area. Smooth black shading and fine grey detail define the guitar body, strings and sound hole, while the leaves behind it are shaded in greys. The red rose is the main splash of colour against the dark grey and black composition.

Realism Upper arm Guitar Rose Leaves String

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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

Nobody pawns a guitar with the strings still in tune, which is how I knew the lad meant to come back for it. He set it on my counter in October, black as a wet road, with a red rose wound through the headstock as if someone had tried to bind the thing shut. Forty quid, I offered. He took thirty and a promise, and I wrote the ticket out in my careful hand: one acoustic, cutaway, rose attached, do not remove.

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He paid the interest every Friday after that, a pound coin at a time, never missing. Between payments he sat on the bench outside the shop and played the same four chords to the bus shelter. I asked him once why he didn't just buy it back. He said the guitar was keeping a promise for him, and he didn't want to be the sort who broke one first.

The rose went brown at the edges by Christmas, and I thought that was the end of it. Then in March a woman came in with her coat buttoned to the chin and a biscuit tin full of notes. She said her name was Marjorie and that she had sung harmony with him at the Working Men's Club the year he wrote his song. She wanted the ticket. She looked at the rose for a long while and said to leave it be.

She lifted the guitar as if it weighed nothing, turned the top string a quarter tone, and played him the first line of the song he never finished. I locked the door and let her sit on the bench for as long as she liked.