Black and grey realism tattoo of an open pocket watch, two roses and the script Tempus fugit across the upper back.

Pocket watch and roses with Tempus fugit

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large tattoo shows an open pocket watch with Roman numerals on its face, set between two shaded roses with leaves. Script lettering reading Tempus fugit sits over a torn paper background behind the watch. The work uses smooth black and grey shading with fine detail on the watch casing and petals, and the design fills the shoulder blade area of the back.

Realism Lettering Back Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Rose Leaves Script Lettering

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

By the third week out of Valparaíso the mate's watch had stopped for the last time, and nobody aboard the Greyhen would lend him theirs. The cook held that a borrowed timepiece brought bad weather, and the captain said he had no spare, which was a lie everyone could see through. So the mate went forward to the boy in the forepeak, who kept a silver pocket watch wrapped in oilcloth, and asked what it would cost him.

Keep reading

The boy, Tobiah, wanted nothing but a promise. Keep it wound, he said, and tell me the hour when we raise the Lizard. His father had carried it round the Horn twice and never once been late for a tide. The mate took it, wound it by the lamp, and found the hands moved with a stubbornness he had not expected, as though the thing counted something other than minutes.

Off the Horn a gale laid them over for two days. When the sky cleared the mate went below and found his own hook empty, and the boy sitting on his bunk with the lid of the watch open on his knee. Pressed flat against the back cover were a rose petal gone brown at the edges and a scrap torn from a logbook. On the scrap, in a hand the mate did not know, were the words Tempus fugit. The boy said his father had written them. The mate said nothing and held out his palm.

They raised the Lizard on a grey Tuesday at a quarter past six, and the mate read the hour aloud as promised. Tobiah snapped the case shut and laughed. Time flies, he said, which is what old men say when they have given up keeping it. The mate handed the watch back and kept the petal, folded inside his cap for the rest of the crossing.