Black and white photo of a small fine line violin tattoo with a crossing bow on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Violin tattoo on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small violin is drawn in thin black linework, with a bow crossing diagonally behind it. The tattoo sits on the outer upper arm near the elbow, and the arm is photographed in black and white. The plain background and close framing keep the small design as the clear focus.

Fine line Upper arm Bow Music

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

Don't look at me like that, Maggie, I'm getting to the fiddle. Every man in Whitby knows the Crooked Lamp has a back room, and every man in that back room has heard the tune. Old Hobday played it on the night the herring boats came in short, a thin sad thing, the bow dragging over the strings like it had a stone tied to it. He was half drunk and wholly stubborn, and the landlord said he'd not pay him a penny until he stopped. So Hobday stood up on the table, cracked the bow across his own knee, and played the rest with the splinters. Nobody could tell you how that works, but the sound came out clean as a bell.

Keep reading

The lad from the chandler's, young Tully, went quiet over his pint. He'd a sister who sang in the chapel choir and a debt his father couldn't pay, and he'd been hoping someone would tell him a story with a door in it. Hobday climbed down, tucked the broken bow under his coat, and walked out into the wet street. Tully followed, because that's what lads do when they're frightened and interested at once.

They found the fiddle the next morning wedged in the harbour wall, strings singing in the wind, and the bow was gone. Tully swears he saw a shadow lift it from the stones and carry it up the cliff path, straight as a surveyor's chain. He told his sister, and she told the choir, and that's how the chandler's debt got paid, though nobody will say by whom.

So when you hear a fiddle playing at night in Whitby with no fiddler in sight, don't go down to the harbour wall. Just nod, and leave the back door open.