Black and grey realism tattoo of an open pocket watch with Roman numerals and sub-dials on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic pocket watch on forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed pocket watch with a ring bow, crown and engraved case is shown on the forearm, with Roman numerals, a moon phase window and two small sub-dials on the face. The tattoo uses fine linework and soft grey shading to give the metal case depth and a polished highlight. The watch fills the centre of the frame against a blurred green-yellow background, and the case has a faint warm shadow beneath it.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Dial Moon phase

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 skipper never looked at the sea to judge the tide. He looked at the moon window in his father's pocket watch, the little painted crescent that slid across the dial, and then he would tell me to get the net over before the flood took the bottom out from under us. I was seventeen and thought he was daft, right up until the morning the fog came down on the Ruth like a wet sheet and the only thing aboard that knew where we were was that watch.

Keep reading

It hung from a nail by the wheelhouse door on a cord he had replaced twice. The case was silver, worn soft and grey at the edges where his thumb had rubbed it for forty years, and the Roman numerals had gone a little brown with age. Two small sub-dials sat in the upper corners like sleepy eyes, and the lower one ticked off the seconds in a thin, hurried sweep. I stood at the rail with it open in my palm, counting those ticks against the swell, and found the waves were coming in step with them.

We found the marker buoy off the Lizard at eleven minutes past four, exactly where the moon window had promised. The skipper said nothing. He held his hand out, closed my fingers over the watch, and let it go. He had carried it through three wars of weather and one divorce, and now it was mine to keep wound.

I wind it every morning on the quay before the boats go out, with the bow turned toward the harbour wall. The moon still crawls across the dial at its own pace, and when the crescent touches the numeral nine I know the water is turning, whatever the sky is telling me.