Black and grey pencil drawing of a spread-winged owl gripping a pocket watch on a chain, presented as a tattoo design sketch.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl with pocket watch design

Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pencil drawing of an owl with its wings fully spread, staring forward with large round eyes. The owl grips a pocket watch hanging from a looped chain, and a second empty circle sits to the right. The feathers are built up with fine hatching and shading in greys, with strong contrast in the wing tips and a plain pale background.

Owl Wing Feather Pocket watch Clock Chain

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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 ovens were already ticking when Nell Harrow found the watch in the flour bin. It had been her father's, and before him the night baker's at Crowther's on Fenner Street, where for sixty years the first loaves went out before the milk float. The chain was tangled in a sack of wholemeal, the case scratched, its hands stopped at ten to four.

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She wound it, though it hardly needed winding, and set it on the marble beside the proving baskets. Outside the window the street was still black. Her brother Tom had always said the owl painted above the door was a bad omen, something that watched the dough when nobody else did. Their father had laughed and had the wings done in gold leaf, spread wide as the shutters.

At quarter to five she lifted the first tray of cobs and counted them out, one, two, eleven, twelve, the way he had taught her. The watch ticked against the board. Tom came down the stairs in his coat without being called, and they worked without speaking until the sky over the chimneys turned the colour of weak tea.

When the shutters rose she saw the empty circle on the chain, the blank face her father had never filled in. He used to say the owl needed a second clock, one for whoever opened next. She hung the watch on its hook beside the till, turned its face to the window, and chalked on the board: Open. Two loaves ready. Come early.