Black and grey realistic pocket watch tattoo with exposed gears, a beaded chain and scrollwork, sitting on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch with beaded chain on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pocket watch with an ornate bow, numbered dial and exposed gears is shown at the centre, with a beaded chain running from the top and bottom edges. Scrolling foliage and feather-like shapes wrap around the watch, with soft grey shading giving the metal a rounded, three-dimensional look. The tattoo is in black and grey ink and fills most of the frame on a forearm.

Realism Neo-trad Forearm Pocket watch Clock Gear Chain Bead Scrollwork Feather

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

Mind the fire, the lot of you, and let an old man wet his throat. Where was I? Ah yes, the night the Haddon pass closed, and a stranger came stamping up to the inn with snow to his knees and a pocket watch clenched in his fist. He asked Mistress Ada Penhallow for a bed and a winding key, and she gave him the first and sold him the second for a shilling she never once forgot.

Keep reading

The case of that watch had a bow curled like a wren's wing, and the dial sat behind a little glass so you could see the gears turning like the wheels of a mill seen from a hill. He wore a chain of grey beads from the bow down to his coat, and every bead, he said, was a day he owed to somebody. He would not let anyone open the back. Nobody needed to. Ada's boy Tom had been stealing glances at that watch all evening.

When the man slept by the hearth, Tom crept over with a butter knife and pried the back loose. Inside, the wheels were running the wrong way, one small tooth at a time, back toward the hour his wife had walked out into the snow and never come home. Tom, being a sensible boy, did not wind it forward. He sat with the watch in his lap until the stranger woke, and he told him plainly what he had seen.

By morning the pass was open and the stranger was gone. The chain lay coiled on the table with one bead missing, and the watch had been set to the hour the snow stopped falling. Tom wears that bead on a cord now and swears the inn clock has never once run slow since. Pass me the jug, would you? My throat's dry again.