Realistic tattoo on a forearm of a pocket watch with Roman numerals, a chain, a flower and a shaded object, mostly in grey with gold accents.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch and flowers on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large realistic tattoo covers the forearm, centred on an open pocket watch with Roman numerals and visible gears, hanging from a chain. Two flowers, possibly poppies, sit beside the watch, with a shaded vessel or object on the left edge. The linework is soft and the shading is detailed and smooth, mostly in greys with warm gold tones on the watch rim, hands and flower centres.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Roman numeral Chain Flower Poppy Gear Clock face

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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

Sit down by the stove, and keep your hands off the bench. That silver case you're eyeing belonged to a ferryman called Tobias Quill, who wound it every evening at the foot of Cheapside Steps, because he swore the city ran on it. Every night the bells were rung by his count, and every lamplighter on the embankment set his wick by the flash of its open face.

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One November the fog came up off the river thick as wool and stayed nine days. Tobias's watch stopped at twenty past three, the hour his daughter had stepped onto the last boat and never stepped off. He carried it to a clockmaker in Pudding Lane, who lifted the back plate, watched the little wheels turn slow as thoughts, and said the trouble was not in the gears. Someone had to decide to start them again. Tobias pressed a poppy from the churchyard wall flat between two pages of his ledger, slid it under the glass, and rowed out to the middle of the water.

Nobody saw what happened out there. The fog thinned at dawn and the ferry lamp was still burning, and on the bench sat a girl in a yellow shawl, holding the watch open on her knee. Its hands were moving. Tobias rowed her to the north bank without asking for the fare, and he never once looked back at the lantern on his stern.

So when you hear the bell at Cheapside strike twenty past three, don't be frightened. It is only the ferry coming in, and somebody is finally going home.