Pencil drawing of a treble clef and musical notes wrapped in ribbon banners, shaded in greyscale, suitable as a tattoo design reference.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Treble clef and music notes on ribbons

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a treble clef surrounded by musical notes, with several notes sitting on looping ribbon banners in the background. The linework is soft and sketchy, with graphite shading that creates depth on the ribbons and the underside of the clef. The image is entirely greyscale on a plain white background, with the composition centred on the clef.

Treble clef Music note Ribbon Music

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The banner came back from Mr Pryce's shop on Tuesday, and I have to tell you the lettering is wrong. He has painted SILVER BAND across the ribbon where it should say SILVER PRIZE, and the treble clef has come out looking like a question mark that has given up. Still, the notes are right. Someone has gone round every crotchet with a fine brush and then smudged the shadows with a thumb, so the ribbons look as if they could be lifted off the page and wound round a lamp post.

We sang the Hallelujah on Sunday with the banner propped against the organ, and old Gwyn Pugh kept glancing up at it as if the clef might come down and tell him he was flat. He was, mind. Half the sopranos were a bar behind too, but nobody in the back pews noticed, which is the mercy of a chapel full of people who have come for the tea afterwards.

I went up the hill after, to the wall where the tram used to turn, and sat with the cornet case open on my knee. I had not played it since the colliery closed and the rehearsal room went with it. I held the mouthpiece to my lip and did not blow. It seemed enough to know the thing was still in my hands, a shape of breath waiting.

Come home at Whitsun if you can. Bring the boys. I will show you the banner, and you can tell me what the clef is really meant to look like, since I am sure I have been drawing it wrong for thirty years.

Your loving brother, Tom