Black and grey flash design of two shaded roses, a Roman numeral pocket watch, a quill feather and a key over ink splatters, with no body placement shown.

Roses, pocket watch and feather flash

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey tattoo design drawing showing two shaded roses, one at the top left and one at the lower right, framing an ornate pocket watch with Roman numerals. A quill feather sweeps diagonally across the top and a key sits to the left, with ink splatters and swirling flourishes filling the gaps. The shading is detailed and soft on the petals and watch case, set on a plain white background.

Realism Botanical Rose Pocket watch Clock Feather Quill Key Ink splatter Roman numeral

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

Sit down, you, and mind the lamp. No, the other lamp, the one that doesn't smoke. The chronometer had run fourteen days wrong by the time we raised the Horn, and Captain Ferris would not have it said his ship kept poor time. So he gave the thing to the purser, a thin man called Abel Pyke, and told him to wind it every night at eight bells and write the figure in the log with a proper pen, not a pencil.

Keep reading

Pyke kept the key on a string round his neck, brass worn smooth on one side from his thumb. Every night he sat in the cabin with the watch open on the green baize and the quill scratching beside it, and every night, he swore to me, the little hands crept an hour ahead of what the stars allowed. Nobody believed him. Men on long voyages will believe anything except that the sea is patient.

The rose came aboard at Valparaiso, wrapped in newspaper, a gift from a widow who sold flowers on the quay. Pyke pressed it in the log between the sixtieth parallel and the seventy-first, and the petals dried the colour of stewed tea. Somewhere past the Falklands the ink pot cracked in a squall and the whole cabin ran black, a spatter across the charts like a bruised sky. He didn't scold. He just sat and watched it dry.

When we finally made Pitcairn, Pyke stepped ashore with the watch in his fist, and the Captain's man asked him the hour. He opened the case, looked a long while, and said, Time enough. Then he dropped the key over the side. Ask me which of them was right, and I'll tell you the watch was never slow. It was only counting something else.