Fine line botanical design of a pocket watch framed by leaves, open flowers and a beaded chain, drawn in black ink on paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch with flowers and beaded chain

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A line drawing of an open pocket watch with a plain face and single hand, encircled by a beaded chain, leafy stems and several open flowers. The linework is fine and even, with light hatching on the case and no shading on the dial. The design is black ink on white paper, shown flat and filling most of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Pocket watch Clock Flower Leaves Bead Chain

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the dog. No, the watch won't tell you the time. It never told anyone the time. Look at that face, plain as a bread plate. My grandfather had it off a man who owed him for a ewe, and the man said it had belonged to a girl who sold posies on the Tarnside road, and she'd drawn the flowers round the chain herself, though nobody believed that.

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The winter of the great snow, the beck froze solid and the lambing came early. Grandfather was up on the top field with a lantern, three ewes down and the fourth in real trouble. He had nothing to tell the hour by but that single hand, which he'd wound that morning and forgotten to set. He held the case open against his coat so the cold wouldn't stiffen the spring, and he counted his breaths instead.

By first light the ewe had twins, both breathing, and the hand was standing straight up at the top of the dial, which he always said was where things pointed when they had gone right. He carried the watch home inside his shirt, warm as a hen's egg, and the beaded chain left a row of cold dots across his chest that he showed us when we were small.

So you see, it doesn't tell the time. It tells you when to stop counting and go and put the kettle on. Now, who's taking the lantern out to the top field?