Black and grey upper arm sleeve with red cherry blossoms, a shaded skull and a pocket watch, in a Japanese style.

Cherry blossom and skull sleeve on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A shaded skull and a pocket watch with Roman numerals sit within swirling black and grey smoke-like shapes, with a rose partly visible near the elbow. Red and pink cherry blossoms with yellow centres run across the shoulder and down the arm. The skull and watch have soft greyscale shading, while the blossoms add the only bright colour, and the design wraps around the upper arm from shoulder to elbow.

Japanese Realism Upper arm Shoulder Cherry blossom Skull Pocket watch Clock Rose Smoke Swirl Flower

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

The cherry tree had come into flower a full fortnight early, and Mother Quill said it was the tree's own business to be impatient, not the bride's. She stood in the lane with her apron full of petals and told the wedding guests to keep their hands off the blossom until the vows were said.

Keep reading

The groom, Aldous Reed, had brought his grandfather's pocket watch to the church, a heavy thing with Roman numerals worn almost smooth. Every man in Penhallow knew the story: the old fisherman had wound it each morning for fifty years and had never once been late for the tide. When the vicar asked for the rings, Aldous fumbled the case open, and the hands had stopped at a quarter past eleven, the hour the old man died.

Hanne did not flinch. She took the watch from him, shut the lid, and slipped it back into his coat. "Then we'll let it rest," she said, "and keep our own time." She had a skull of dark glass on her windowsill, a gift from a glassblower in Redruth, and she said it kept the dead in their place and the living honest. Nobody had thought to ask her about that until then.

They walked out under the tree after. The wind shook a shower of petals down over the wedding party, and the bride laughed until she cried. That night Aldous wound the watch though it still would not go, and set it on the sill beside the glass skull. By morning the petals had drifted into its open case, red on the old silver, and neither of them moved them.