Black and grey realism chest tattoo of an eye, a Roman numeral clock face and birds, with a heartbeat line on the shoulder.

Realistic eye and clock on chest

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic eye sits on the upper chest with a wing-like shape behind it and small birds in flight above. A Roman numeral clock face with visible gears overlaps the eye on the right, and a thin heartbeat line with script runs toward the shoulder. Soft shading and fine detail are used throughout, with black ink splatter and streaks trailing down the chest.

Realism Blackwork Chest Shoulder Eye Clock Roman numeral Bird Wing Heartbeat line Script Ink splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the third stair, it gives under you, and don't let Mrs Quennell hear you call this a boarding house. She was born in it and she'll tell you so. Now, where was I? The clock. The hall clock at Gull Rest stopped at ten to four in the August of nineteen fifty-two, and it stayed stopped, because my father wound it on a Sunday and forgot it by the Monday. Then the lodger came, Tobias Crane, with a leather roll of tiny tools and a face like he'd been awake for a week. He said a clock wants listening to before it's mended.

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Every morning he sat at the front window with his sketchbook while the gulls came off the harbour wall in their hundreds. He drew them the way other men pray, quick and without fuss. One Tuesday a herring gull came down on the slipway with a length of fishing line wound round one wing, and it lay there looking at him. He crouched, cut the line with his penknife, and the bird didn't fly. It just looked, its eye bright and round and patient as a shop window, and Tobias said it was the most honest thing he'd ever been looked at by.

The clock took him three days. He had the back off and the gears laid out on a tea towel, little brass wheels no bigger than a farthing, and on the Friday morning he set the pendulum swinging. Then he went out to the slipway and sat on the wall without speaking, watching the birds lift and turn over the water. When I asked him what time it was, he laughed and said the gulls had been keeping it all along, and the hall clock was only trying to catch up.