Black and white photograph of clasped hands, with a musical staff and notes tattooed across the back of one hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Musical staff tattoo on the hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are clasped together in a close, softly focused black and white photograph. A musical staff with several notes is tattooed across the back of one hand, with the lines curving over the knuckles. The background is blurred and mostly grey, which keeps attention on the hands and the thin black ink.

Hand Musical staff Musical note Hand

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 piano in the back room of the Gull and Anchor had been tuned by a man who liked his thirds sour, so Marguerite played everything a little wrong and the regulars forgave her for it. Tonight the rain came sideways off the harbour and the bar was empty except for Teodor, who had come in soaked and sat with his hands wrapped round a glass he never lifted.

Keep reading

He had written the tune on the back of a ferry ticket in the rain, he said, while waiting for a boat that never came. Marguerite took the ticket from him. The stave had been drawn with a ruler and then smudged where his thumb had rested. Four bars, a rising line that stopped halfway up as if the singer had lost their breath.

She played it through once with the pedal down. The notes hung in the damp air of the room like laundry that would not dry. When she reached the place where the melody should have climbed, she left the chord unresolved and looked up at him over her shoulder.

He was still holding the glass. Outside, a boat horn sounded twice, long and then short, and somewhere beyond the breakwater a light swung slowly across the water. Teodor laughed, quietly, and said that was the ending, then, and she said it was the only honest one, and neither of them touched the drinks.