Realism black and grey tattoo of an open pocket watch with Roman numerals and exposed gears on an upper arm, with a faint rose behind it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch with exposed gears

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic pocket watch with an open case and exposed brass-style gears sits on the arm, with Roman numerals around the clock face and a fine chain-style bow at the top. The shading is smooth and detailed, with strong highlights on the metal casing and soft shadows that give depth. Faint rose petals appear in the background to the left, and the composition is shot close and slightly angled.

Realism Upper arm Pocket watch Clock Gear Roman numeral Rose

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 ovens at Hallow Lane were lit an hour before the church bell, and Mrs Oakes, who kept the bakehouse under the railway arch, said that a loaf rose only as well as the hour it was started. So the baker's boy, Tomas, was up before the carts, shovelling coke by the light of a tin lamp, and he was never late, because Mrs Oakes kept a pocket watch on a chain pinned to her apron and would tap it when he dawdled.

Keep reading

The watch had belonged to her husband, who had sold bread for forty years and had given up his own sleep to do it. Its back had been opened so long ago that the brass wheels showed through the glass, turning slowly, one into another, and Tomas liked to watch them while the dough proved. Mrs Oakes said the wheels were the bakehouse itself: each one turning a smaller one, and all of them wanting the flour to come in on time.

One February the watch stopped. Mrs Oakes wound it and it sulked, and the Roman numerals stayed fixed while the loaves came out a shade too dark. Tomas, who had been fiddling with the gears in secret, admitted he had dropped it on the flagstones. He expected a telling-off. Instead she took the watch from him, held it to the lamp, and said that a thing that had been opened could be mended only by someone who had looked inside it properly.

So he learned. By spring he could clean a jewelled gear with a feather and a drop of oil, and by summer the watch ticked as it always had. On the first morning it kept true, Mrs Oakes buttered a heel of bread, gave it to him, and tapped the glass once, as if the watch had passed its test too.