Black and grey realism tattoo of an ornate pocket watch face with Roman numerals, a crescent moon and scrollwork, on the upper leg near the knee.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch with Roman numerals on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of an ornate pocket watch face sits on the upper leg near the knee. Roman numerals, a crescent moon, hour and minute hands and a dotted inner ring are shaded with smooth tonal gradients. Ornate scrollwork fills the outer edge, and a larger version of the same design appears on the left of the frame.

Realism Thigh Pocket watch Clock face Roman numeral Crescent moon Clock hand Scrollwork

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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

Hold still, and keep your hands off that wall, because it has held more secrets than your nan's handbag. Now listen. Tobias Quill kept a pocket watch in his waistcoat for forty years, and every night he wound it under the crescent moon that hung above the kitchen garden like a paring of cheese. The face had its Roman numerals worn soft by his thumb, and round the edge ran scrollwork like brambles that never quite gave up their fruit.

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The day his daughter Marjorie took the train to the city, he stopped the watch at ten past four and would not wind it again. The hands stayed where they were. He pruned the roses, he picked the pears, and he stood at the gate each evening listening for a bell that had no reason to ring. Winter came and went, the brambles grew over the lower wall, and the gardener grew smaller inside his coat.

Then one May a boy called Ezra came over the wall after pears, tripped on a root, and his hand closed on something cold in the nettles. It was the watch, face down, its inner ring dotted with rust. He held it up to the moon and read the time, ten past four, and he thought it a joke, so he wound it and set the hands to the hour the church clock was striking. Somewhere behind the potting shed a door creaked open, and a woman's voice called out a name nobody had said in years.

Tobias came down the path that evening with his coat buttoned wrong. Ezra never did get his pears. He got a gardener's thanks and a sixpence, and the watch went back into the waistcoat, ticking as loud as a heartbeat.