Black and grey tattoo of a white treble clef on a black guitar pick, on the inside of a forearm near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Treble clef on a guitar pick, forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black guitar pick sits on the inner forearm close to the wrist, with a light, thin-lined treble clef set in its centre. The solid black fill of the pick contrasts with the delicate outline of the clef. The photograph is taken close up against a dark background, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Forearm Treble clef 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

Mother, the lyre-master Kallias took my plectrum today and held it to the window the way the potters hold a cup up to check for cracks. It is cut from the black shell of a tortoise, thin as a fingernail and shaped like a fig leaf, and I have worn one edge smooth against the strings over three winters. He turned it over twice before he spoke. "You press too hard on the upstroke," he said, "and the note goes sour before it has finished."

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Then he gave it back and scratched something into the centre with the point of his stylus, a curl like the tail of a wave with a single stroke running through it. It is the sign he uses on the wax tablets when a line of verse is to be sung high, and he has never once explained it to me. I asked what it meant. He said I would learn it when I stopped needing to ask.

I did not sleep well that night. I sat on the step of the courtyard with the pick in my palm and the marks cold under my thumb, and I played the scale over and over, softer each time, lifting at the top the way he showed me. The dogs in the lane stopped barking somewhere after the third hour. By the time the bread-seller came up the hill, I could hear the difference myself.