Black and grey pencil drawing of a Roman numeral pocket watch with exposed gears, a quill feather and the words be present in cursive script.

Pocket watch and quill with be present script

Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pencil drawing of an open-faced pocket watch with Roman numerals, a chain of beads, and exposed cogs on the face and a geared wheel hanging at its side. A quill feather curves across the top and the cursive words be present sit beneath the watch. The shading is soft and graded in greys on a plain white background, with fine hatching on the case and feather.

Pocket watch Clock Gear Cog Quill Feather Chain Script

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

The escapement had been stopping every afternoon for a week, and Margit Hallows swore it was the damp rather than her own cack-handed oiling. Her apprentice, a lanky boy called Tobias who chewed the ends of his pencils, held the lamp steady while she bent over the open case of the old pocket watch on the bench. The cogs on the dial glinted like the teeth of a small, patient animal.

Keep reading

"Mr Greaves wants it back by Saturday," he said. "He says it's his father's and he'll know if it runs slow."

"Then it will run true by Saturday or I shall eat the feather off his quill." She tapped the brass gear with a fine steel pick and watched the wheel shiver and settle. The loose pin sat where it had always sat, nagging at the train. Behind her, a quill lay across the windowsill where Greaves had left it three weeks ago, when he came in to collect a repair and forgot to take his pen. Nobody had come back for it.

By evening the watch ticked steadily in her palm, and the second hand swept round as if it had somewhere urgent to be. Margit wound it, closed the case, and turned the little hanging chain between her fingers. Beads clicked against one another like tiny rain.

When Greaves came in on Saturday, tall and grey and smelling of rain, she handed him the watch and nodded at the windowsill. He picked up the quill, looked at the watch, and then, very slowly, he laughed. "My father always said it was the wrong way to measure a life," he said. "Watching the hands. I never believed him." He tucked the quill into his coat and walked out into the afternoon, and for once he did not look at the time.