Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket watch with gears and Roman numerals on a forearm, with the name Greyson on the dial and 2015 below.

Pocket watch with gears on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large pocket watch sits at the centre of the design, with Roman numerals, a date window reading OCT 6 and the name GREYSON on the dial, and the year 2015 written beneath it. Cog wheels and a smaller faded watch sit behind the main face, drawn with soft shading and fine outlines. The tattoo is in black and grey on a pale forearm photographed against a dark background.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Gear Cog Roman numeral Date Name 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

The watch had come in on the sixth of October with a cracked mainspring and a bent bow, and Mrs Ostler wanted it back before the Friday market. I sat under the lamp in the back room with the loupe screwed to my eye and the wheels laid out on a square of green baize like a hand of cards nobody was going to win.

Keep reading

Nobody at the shop knew whose it had been. Mr Ashdown had written a name on the ticket in pencil and then rubbed it half away with his thumb, so all I had was a date window stuck on the sixth and a ring of Roman numerals worn smooth from forty years of being checked by the same tired eye. Behind the main dial someone had scratched a smaller set of gears into the case, faint, as if the owner had meant to add something and thought better of it.

Around midnight I found the reason the crack had come. The pinion had been replaced once already, by a man who had cut the new tooth at the wrong angle, and every swing of the balance had been grinding against it since before the war. I filed it true, polished the seat, and regulated the escapement by ear until the tick came even and small, the way a heartbeat sounds when you stop trying to hear it.

On Friday Mrs Ostler held the watch to her ear, closed her eyes, and asked what I wanted for it. I said nothing. She opened the case, looked at the inside of the lid where a name had been scratched in a hand I didn't know, and went quiet for a long while. Then she put it in her coat pocket and said that it had kept good time for her husband too.