Black treble clef tattoo with grey music notes above it on the inner forearm, drawn in bold linework with soft grey shading.

Treble clef and music notes on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black treble clef fills most of the frame, with a small dot beside its lower curl. Above it, a cluster of grey music notes sits on wavy staff-like lines, with lighter shading than the clef. The ink is black and grey on pale skin, and the design is centred on the forearm.

Forearm Treble clef Music note Music staff Music

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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

Dearest Wilhelmina, the bells of Corvane have not rung since the frost came down the Ostrel valley, so I write to you by candle instead, with the ink thinned by river water because the good ink is locked in the chancellor's tower. You asked whether the court musicians still play the old hymns in the cathedral. They do, though the organ has lost two pipes and the boy who pumps the bellows is my cousin Tobin, who counts beats aloud and gets the middle ones wrong.

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The real news is the clef. Last month the surveyors found a stone set into the north wall of the cathedral, carved with a great looping hook that curls round a single ring, with a dot pressed beside its lower bend like a spilled seed. The old cantor says it is the sign by which the first kings marked where a song should begin. Nobody has been able to read it, and the chancellor has ordered it covered in plaster before the spring fair. Tobin and I went up the scaffold at dusk and copied it onto the back of my survey sheet, and while we were copying, the wind lifted a scatter of loose vellum from the loft and flung it against the stone. Pinned there were little grey notes, faint as breath, running along wavy lines like rigging on a ship.

I have decided the plaster can wait. I am sending you the copy, and the vellum, and a request that you bring your lute when you come up for the thaw. Tobin says the notes want to be played from the bottom curl upward. I think he is only guessing, but I would rather guess with you than be right alone.

Your loyal friend, Edrin