Colour traditional tattoo on a thigh showing a pocket watch, painted planets and two banners reading "All of time and space, where do you want to start?"

Pocket watch and planets banner on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A bold tattoo sits on the outer thigh and shows an open pocket watch with a chain, surrounded by a red planet, a teal ringed planet, and a smaller planet, with two ribbon banners carrying the text. The design uses dark outlines, solid colour fills and soft grey shading behind the motifs to create a background of space. The composition is centred on the thigh, with the watch as the focal point and the banners framing the text across the top and bottom.

Traditional Thigh Pocket watch Planet Banner Lettering Chain Space

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

Mrs Pruett's watch had stopped at twenty past four on the afternoon the lodger arrived, and it never started again, though the kitchen clock kept perfect time over the teapot. I was the one who let the room at the top of Brackenhall Terrace that October, taking coins I had counted twice, and I was the one who noticed the stranger's pocket watch was ticking when nothing else in Gullhaven was.

Keep reading

He came down to breakfast on the third morning with the thing open in his palm, its silver lid folded back and the chain looping over his knuckles like a dropped rosary. "Everything's out of order in this house," he said, not unkindly. "Your landlady's clock says half four. Mine says Tuesday, and it's the only honest one." Mrs Pruett set a boiled egg in front of him and told him to mind his manners.

Then he asked me, while the gulls argued on the railings outside, whether I had a minute to spare for the sea. I told him the sea had been there since before the terrace and could wait for the bacon. He laughed, and the laugh was the strangest part: it rang on far longer than a laugh should, like a bell left swinging after the rope has gone slack.

On his last morning he left a folded note under my cup. It said only: All of time, and space. Where do you want to start? He had gone by the time the tide turned, and the room was empty except for the watch on the windowsill, wound and ticking. Each dawn I pick it up, hold it to my ear, and wait for the hour to decide.