Black line drawing of a violin with ornate scrolls on its body and swirling flourishes on either side, shown as a tattoo design on a white background.

Violin with scroll flourishes

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A single violin is drawn in black linework, centred on a plain white background, with its scroll, strings, f-holes and bridge clearly outlined. Curling ornamental swirls decorate the upper and lower bouts of the body, and symmetrical flourishes with small dot details extend out to the left and right. The design uses bold black lines and fine interior detail with no shading or colour.

Fine line Scroll Flourish Music String Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Kestrel House had been broken since March, so Ade carried the case up eleven flights on his back, the strap cutting into his shoulder every time he stopped on a landing to breathe. Mrs Okonedo on the fourth floor had a leaking ceiling and a daughter who wanted lessons on the violin, and the council had sent nobody. Ade had found the instrument in a charity shop in Walthamstow for twelve pounds, its scroll chipped, its strings gone green with age, and he had restrung it at his kitchen table with a pair of pliers and a YouTube video he watched four times.

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The girl, Temi, was nine and furious with the bow. She drew it across the open G and it screeched like a gull caught in a door. Ade didn't laugh. He took her hand and showed her how the wrist should sit loose, how the weight should fall through the arm instead of being pushed. Down below, a car alarm started and stopped. Somebody's football thudded against the bin store wall, again and again, like a slow metronome.

By the end of the month she could play a wobbly version of a hymn her grandmother used to hum. Mrs Okonedo stood in the doorway with a tea towel over her shoulder and did not say anything, which Ade understood to be the highest praise on the building. When he packed up to leave, the violin went back into its case with the bow tucked beside it. Temi had drawn a little curl of ink on the lid with a biro, a flourish that trailed off the edge, and he decided it would stay there.