Realistic black and grey tattoo of a clock face with Roman numerals and a gear mechanism on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Clock face with Roman numerals on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large clock face with bold Roman numerals and a detailed gear mechanism sits across the upper arm, with clock hands and a rim visible. The piece uses smooth, photographic shading with strong contrast between deep black and soft grey highlights, and the skin tone shows through in places. The tattoo fills most of the frame, with the top of the arm and a plain white surface visible around it.

Realism Upper arm Clock Roman numeral Gear Clock hand

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 weights had dropped another two feet by the time you reached the stair, which meant the lamp would start to falter before the hour unless you hurried. You took the steps two at a time, the way Halloran had told you never to, and felt the tower breathe cold air down past your collar. Above you the gearwork ticked in its iron cage like someone counting under their breath.

Keep reading

The clock on the landing had come from the old station at Skerrin Rock, shipped over in a crate the year the Board decided the lamp could run itself. Its face was cracked across the III and mended with lacquer gone the colour of weak tea. Halloran swore it kept better time than any man on the rock. You held the lantern up and checked: twelve minutes past eleven, the lens still turning, brass cogs meshing behind the glass with a patience that irritated you.

The storm came in from the west just after midnight. By half past the lamp was slowing, a drag in the cogs, the lens hesitating like an old man on a stair. Fog had swallowed the lower rock, and somewhere out there the Margaret Joan was feeling her way toward the gap between the skerries. If the beam stopped, she would not find it. You fitted the crank and leaned into it, and a tooth in the big wheel gave with a crack you felt through your teeth.

There was no spare. You prised the broken tooth free with a chisel, filed a rough blade from a length of brass rod, and wedged it in beside the bent nail Halloran kept for luck. The weights rose. The lens found its pace. When you finally looked up the clock read a quarter past one, the hands resting on the cracked III, and across the kitchen wall the beam swept past, bright and steady, then came round again.