Black ink line drawing of a rose, pocket watch and bead chain with leaves, shown as a tattoo design on paper rather than on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and pocket watch design drawing

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink outline drawing of a rose in bloom, with a pocket watch showing Roman numerals at its centre and a beaded chain hanging below. Leaves fill the gaps around the flower and watch, and a small clasp sits at the end of the chain. The linework is even and uncoloured, with no shading, and the design sits centrally on a pale sheet of paper.

Botanical Rose Pocket watch Clock Chain Leaves

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

Mo Harrand had the lock keeper's signal for ten past six and the watch still said quarter to. She held the chain up against the lamp on the cabin roof and let the beads swing until they settled. Her grandfather had wound it every Sunday for forty years on the Grand Union, with the roses painted on the cabin doors going pink in the rain. Nobody on the boat had ever been late.

Keep reading

The Hebe was loaded with coal for Braunston, and the river had gone sullen since the storm. Mo worked the paddles on the top gate alone, the windlass biting on the spindle, water roaring out beneath the timber. Ruth, her cousin, sat on the gunwale with her boots in the wet and called out the minutes from the church clock across the fields, a few seconds ahead of the watch, always.

By the time the boat had cleared the lock the sky had gone the colour of wet slate. Mo stopped, opened the watch, and found the hands had finally moved, one tick at a time, as if they had only been waiting for someone to stand still long enough. She clicked the clasp shut and tucked the chain into her coat. Ruth looked at the watch, then at her, and said nothing about the church clock being right all along.