Black and grey realistic tattoo of an open pocket watch with Roman numerals and visible movement, on the forearm near the elbow.

Realistic pocket watch on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pocket watch with a chain bow and Roman numerals is tattooed on the forearm, showing the dial, hour and minute hands, and the exposed mechanical movement. The shading uses smooth grey gradients and sharp black highlights to give the metal a three-dimensional, polished look. The image is in black ink and greys, with a blurred indoor background and a faint flourish partly visible at the bottom edge.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Gear

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

Nobody aboard the Calliope Rose trusted the chronometer after the fever took the second engineer, so the pocket watch did the work. It lived in a tin box in the chart room, a silver case with Roman numerals worn soft at the edges, and only Mr Okonedo was allowed to wind it. He did this at four bells each afternoon with the lid open, the tiny ship set into the bow catching light from the skylight, while the rest of us pretended not to watch.

Keep reading

Off the Bay of Biscay the swell came up grey and mean, and a loose crate sent the tin box skidding across the chart table. The glass cracked in a neat star. The hands stopped at twenty past three and would not be coaxed back. Cook said it was dead and should go over the side with the spoiled tinned peaches. Okonedo held it in his palm for a long time, then asked me, the youngest hand, to take it down to the engine room, where a man called Price could open the back without spilling the wheels.

Price tapped it twice with a screwdriver handle and the movement shivered awake. Through the glass at the back I watched the gears turn in their small, stubborn circles, and he laughed and said the watch had only been sulking. When we raised the Avon mouth three days later, Okonedo took the watch from my hand, set the hands to the church clock on the quay, and found it four minutes slow. He smiled as though that were the best news he had heard all voyage. "It counted the sea," he said, "and kept its own opinion of the hour." Then he closed the lid, and I watched the little ship go dark.