Black and grey realism tattoo of a woman's face with ornate filigree above the eyes and a clock face with Roman numerals across the cheek, on an upper arm.

Black and grey portrait with clock face on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's face is shown in close, detailed portrait form, with a carved-looking baroque ornament across the brow and eyes and a clock dial with Roman numerals wrapped over the cheek. The shading is smooth and highly detailed, moving from deep blacks around the eyes and lips to soft greys on the skin, with bright highlights on the lips and forehead scrollwork. The image shows two views of the same arm tattoo side by side on a dark background, with the design filling the upper arm.

Realism Upper arm Woman Portrait Face Clock Roman numeral Filigree Ornament Lip Scrollwork

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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

Sit closer, you lot, the fire's only warm on one side. Back in the kingdom of Aumery, where the rivers ran uphill on feast days, the clockmakers' guild held the whole city by its wrists. Every bell in the place answered to them, and every bell was a lie told politely.

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Old Hesper Lund was the finest of them, and she had a daughter called Ilse who could read the hours from a candle's drip. When the Duke commissioned a clock for his wife's chamber, Hesper worked three winters on its face. She set the Roman numerals in silver, ringed them with iron scrollwork so fine it looked like frost, and cut the hands to point at the hour the Duke was born. Ilse asked why the hour was wrong, and her mother said that was the Duke's wish, not hers.

On the night the clock was hung, the Duchess stood before it and laughed for the first time in years, because the numerals ran across her cheek like the edge of a locket and she could feel their cold through her skin. The clock had stopped at a quarter to midnight. Nobody had wound it. By morning the Duke was gone, the guild's ledgers were ash, and the Duchess had walked out of the palace with her hair undone, saying at last the things she had been told never to say.

They say the bells of Aumery still ring a little slow. Mind yours.