Realistic black and grey pocket watch with Roman numerals and visible gears, surrounded by blossom and a lace detail, tattooed on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch and blossom on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic pocket watch with an open face, Roman numerals and exposed gears sits at the centre of the design, with a chain loop at the top. Blossom branches and a single flower fill the dark background, and a lace-like pattern appears along the bottom edge. The shading is smooth and detailed, with warm grey and tan tones and strong contrast in the dark areas, and the tattoo fills most of the forearm.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Gear Blossom Flower Lace Branches

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

My father's watch ran the light for thirty-one years before it ever ran me. Every evening at dusk I opened its silver case on the landing, checked the open face against the brass clock by the stair, and wound the spring with the little key that hung from its chain. The Roman numerals had worn pale near the four, where his thumb always pressed, and the gears showed through the glass like the works of some patient animal.

Keep reading

The spring was the only thing on this rock I trusted completely. The blossom came in March, when the wind swung south and carried the orchards from Penhallow across the bay. Petals settled on the gallery rail, on the lace cloth Mrs Tremayne sent out with the supply boat for the table, and once on the watch itself, lying inside the open lid. I brushed them away with my sleeve and did not tell anyone that I had started counting them.

The letter came with the April boat. A clerk from the district office in St Ives wanted to know why our log showed the lamp lit eleven minutes late on nine nights that winter. I sat at the desk with the watch open beside the ledger and checked every entry. The gears were true. The mistake was in my own handwriting, copied from the wall clock, which had been slow since the storm and which I had never thought to question.

I wrote back that the lamp had been lit on time, which was true, and that the fault lay with a clock on the stair, which was also true. Then I took the wall clock down and hung my father's watch in its place, the chain looped over the nail and the face turned to the sea. The blossom had gone from the rail by then. I left the lace where it lay.