Neo-traditional colour tattoo of an owl within a pocket watch, with roses, leaves and wings, on a forearm.

Owl and pocket watch on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

An owl's head sits within the face of a pocket watch with Roman numerals, flanked by yellow and orange roses, leaves and a pair of spread wings behind. Bold dark outlines define the forms, with fine feather hatching and soft shading on the owl and the watch case. Warm yellows, oranges and reds dominate, with pink cord-like lines and green accents, and the motif is centred on the forearm with the raised hand visible above it.

Neo-trad Forearm Owl Pocket watch Clock face Rose Leaves Wing Feather

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

Sit closer, and mind the sand in your collar, because the road to Qasr Imrah runs straight for forty miles and never once tells you where it is going. The old carrier Tobiah kept a pocket watch with a brass case the colour of marigolds, and in its face lived an owl. Not a painted one. A real grey-eared thing that had hatched in the rafters of the Imrah well-house and never learned to be afraid of men with clocks.

Keep reading

Every dusk the owl sat on the watch's rim and turned its head to read the Roman numerals, and every dawn Tobiah wound the spring so the bird could sleep. That was the bargain. The owl kept the hours, and the hours kept the caravans off the dunes when the wind came up white. For eleven years they crossed without losing a single camel.

Then came the spring the roses in the wadi bloomed out of season, great yellow and orange heads of them, and the old carrier grew careless with his winding. He thought the owl could feel the cold coming on its own. It could not. On the last night of his life he set the watch down on a rock, went to fetch water, and came back to find the hands stopped at midnight and the owl gone quiet in its brass cage.

Here is the thing they tell in Imrah, and I will say it once and no more. The owl did not leave. It flew up into the dark where the wind keeps its wings, and it still sits there, turning its head, reading the road for anyone who has lost count of the hours.