Black and grey realistic tattoo on the inner forearm showing an open pocket watch with a heart and veins inside the case, with a shaded rose below.

Pocket watch and rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

An open pocket watch with a detailed dial and Roman numerals sits at the top of the forearm, with a heart and branching veins shown in the lower case. A shaded rose with leaves fills the lower part of the design, and dark smoky shading surrounds the motifs. The work is entirely in black and grey with fine detail and smooth tonal gradients.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Heart Vein Rose Leaves

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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

You are the one who winds the clocks at the Halloran & Sons Travelling Circus, because nobody else will climb the ladder to the big top's rafters before the morning gate opens. The canvas has gone the colour of weak tea. The lion is dead and the elephant is retired to a field outside Doncaster, where she sways at the fence like a widow. Still, the ringmaster insists on the eleven o'clock call, so every day you come down the ladder with grease on your cuffs and tell him the time.

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The pocket watch belonged to old Sam Halloran, who juggled knives under the lights for forty years and never once cut himself. He left it to you in a biscuit tin with a note that said only keep it going. The case is cracked along one hinge. Inside the lid there is a little anatomical print of a heart with its veins spread out like the roots of a tree, which Sam had pasted there the winter his wife died, and which he swore was the only honest picture of love he had ever seen.

On the last night of the season the wind comes off the Humber and tears a corner from the tent. You stand in the wet sawdust holding the watch up to the lamps, and you realise the hands have stopped at a quarter to the hour. You do not wind it. You turn it over in your palm, close the lid on the heart, and walk out past the rose bed Sam planted by the gate, black with rain, to tell the others the show is finally over.