Full sleeve realism tattoo on an arm showing a woman in a lace masquerade mask, red roses, a pocket watch and scrollwork.

Masked woman, roses and pocket watch sleeve

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A four-panel collage of a full sleeve tattoo on an arm. A woman wearing an ornate lace masquerade mask sits at the centre, surrounded by realistic red roses, a pocket watch, handwritten script and grey baroque scrollwork. The shading is smooth and detailed, with the roses in colour and the remaining elements in black and grey.

Realism Forearm Upper arm Woman Mask Lace Rose Pocket watch Script Scrollwork Ornament

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

Nobody in Venice ever asks a masked woman her name, which is why Signora Adelina chose the mask in the first place. I had been paid to carry her letters across the Rialto, and I knew her hand: looping, careless at the tails, as if the pen had been in a hurry to be somewhere else.

Keep reading

The last letter came on the feast of Saint Mark, folded small and sealed with black wax. It said only that the watch would stop at midnight and that she would wait under the lamp at the water stairs. I took it to the palazzo on the Grand Canal, where the ball was already spilling roses across the marble, red petals crushed underfoot by men in silver brocade.

Her husband's pocket watch lay on the hall table where a servant had left it, its hands fixed at a quarter past eleven. I wound it, because my mother taught me never to leave a clock lying. When the bells began, I slipped it into my coat and went down to the water, where the mask was already waiting, its lace catching the lamplight like frost on a window.

She did not thank me. She took the watch, held it to her ear and laughed softly. Time is the one thing my husband never owned, she said, and stepped into the gondola without looking back. I kept the letter. The ink has faded, but the last line still reads plainly: meet me where the roses drown.