Compass and pocket watch forearm pair
Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo
Two mirrored tattoos sit on the inner forearms, each showing a pocket watch with a compass rose on one arm and a Roman numeral clock face on the other, framed by flowers and a banner. The linework is dark and fairly bold, with light shading and stippled detail on the banner and petals. The image is black and grey throughout, with the arms filling the frame and a blurred background.
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
You bring the watches to Mr Halloran on Tuesday because the one with the compass has stopped at a quarter past eleven, while the other keeps perfect time but has never once shown you the way home. He turns them over under his lamp, reads the engraving on each back, and asks whether you want them mended or matched. Matched, you say. He sighs like a man who has heard that before.
Keep reading
The Palais on the pier had a floor that gave under your heels like a held breath. Every Saturday in 1958 Ruth stood by the bandstand with her little brass compass and her map of the town, while you counted the bars of the waltz on your fingers and pretended not to need a clock. She said you would always find the hall again if you followed her north. You said time would find you first.
The hall burned in the spring. Ruth went to Leeds with a man who sold gramophones, and you kept the watch that tells the hour, because somebody has to know when the last bus leaves. Forty years on, the compass watch still wanders in your coat pocket, its needle trembling toward a wall that is no longer there.
Mr Halloran hands them back on Friday. The clock face is bright as a coin, and the rose on the other glints north. You lay them side by side on the counter, and for once neither one is wrong.
More like this
From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.