Pencil line drawing of a tattoo design showing a pocket watch with a bow, a ladybird, a poppy and leaves, drawn on tracing paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch, bow, poppy and ladybird design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil line drawing on tracing paper shows a pocket watch with a dotted rim and a bow at its top, surrounded by a ladybird, a large open poppy and leaves. The linework is fine and even, with light hatching and dot shading in the poppy centre and ladybird. The design is uncoloured and the composition is arranged in a loose cluster around the central watch.

Neo-trad Pocket watch Bow Poppy Ladybird Leaves Flower Clock

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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

The night the St Olave's clock stopped at eleven, Tobias Lind was the only man in Harrowgate who heard it. The bell-ringer came hammering on his shop door in the rain, saying the great dial had frozen and the whole town would sleep through its morning. Tobias took his oilcan, his roll of steel picks and a heel of bread for his pocket, and walked up Cutler Row past shuttered shops and a cat asleep on a bin lid.

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Inside the tower a ladybird sat on the brass escapement, red as a coal, its spots counted out like beads on a string. It walked along the wheel and stopped where one tooth had bent. Tobias had never trusted luck, but he trusted a small creature that knew where a machine was failing, so he set down his lamp and watched it. The ladybird lifted its wing cases and flew to the window ledge, where someone had pressed a poppy years before, papery now and still holding its dark centre.

He straightened the tooth with the finest pick he owned. The wheel turned, and the pendulum swung out over the stairwell as if it had only been waiting for permission. Below, a ribbon left tied to the rail that afternoon lifted and settled. He wound the key three full turns, and the hands crept to midnight and struck twelve.

In the morning the bell-ringer found Tobias asleep on the stairs with the ladybird on his sleeve. He carried it to the window and set it back on the poppy, where it opened its wings and went out into the grey light. The town woke on time, which was all anyone had ever asked of a clock.