Black and grey realism tattoo of roses, a filigree heart locket and pearl beads across the side of the ribs.

Greyscale roses and heart locket on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo shows three shaded roses with leaves, a filigree heart locket with a small heart-shaped clock face inside, and a strand of pearl beads curving across the design. The shading is smooth and detailed, with strong highlights on the metal and soft gradients on the petals. The design fills the frame diagonally on the side of the torso against a plain background.

Realism Botanical Ribs Rose Heart Pearl Bead Leaves Clock Filigree

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 bell at Saint Ebba's has been wrong since Michaelmas, and Brother Anselm will not let you touch the works until you have learned to hear it. Stand in the cold of the bell cot with your palm flat against the oak and count the strokes. Four short, then one long that drags like a boot in mud. He says the metal remembers every hand that has rung it, and that a bell is only ever as true as the person listening.

Keep reading

On the bench below, a silver locket lies open. Inside its filigree heart a tiny clock face has stopped at ten past four, the hands no thicker than eyelashes. Anselm found it in the poor box, wrapped in a handkerchief with a string of pearls, and he has been fitting a new movement into it by candlelight for three weeks. You are to clean the pearls while he works. Each one is a small moon in your palm. Rub them with a chamois, count them the way the novices count their decades, and drop them into the dish with a sound like rain on a tin roof.

On the sixth evening the locket ticks. You hear it before he does, because you have been leaning over the bench with your ear close, and Anselm laughs, a rare sound that sends the rooks up from the yew. The handkerchief had a name stitched in one corner, he tells you, and he has sent word to the parish. Nobody has come. He closes the back, sets the locket on the sill beside the pressed roses the abbess keeps in her missal, and says the thing that matters is that it is keeping time now, whoever it belonged to.

Tonight, when the bell goes for compline, you will hear the locket under the bronze, two small hearts keeping pace in the dark.