Realistic chest tattoo of a shaded skull over a clock face with red splashes and the words too fast to live, too young to die, in black, grey and red.

Skull and clock across chest

Realism · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A large chest tattoo shows a shaded skull centred over a clock face with Roman numerals, with the phrases too fast to live and too young to die set into the dark background. The skull is rendered in soft grey tones with smudged, watercolour-like shading and radiating strokes. Bold red splashes run vertically and horizontally through the composition, creating a strong central cross-like shape against the black and grey.

Realism Chest Skull Clock face Roman numeral Lettering Quote Splatter Watercolour

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

Dear Ruth, The lane is iced over again and the milk lorry has given up on us until the thaw. I am writing this at Dad's table because the kitchen clock stopped on Tuesday at twenty past four and I cannot bring myself to wind it. Mum says it is only the battery. The battery is fine. I opened the face with the butter knife and found a hairline crack running from the XII down through the middle, as if something had struck it from the inside.

Keep reading

You will remember what he used to say about the ewes in March, the ones that lambed too early in the cold. Too fast to live, too young to die. He said it like a joke, then went out in his vest to pull the lambs himself. The red tin is still in the lean-to, the ruddle he marked the tups with every autumn, and I found the rags stiff with it and thought of the gate posts and the dipping trough and the way he never once let anyone else hold the lamp.

This morning I pulled the clock off the wall and carried it out to the yard, meaning to sell it to the man from Ludlow who buys anything with brass in it. Instead I sat on the mounting block and listened. Under the tick that wasn't there I could hear the cattle shifting in the far shed and the wind getting into the gutters, all of it going on without him, faster than it had any right to.

I put the hands back at twenty past four and wound it three turns, not gently. It has been running since, a little fast, which is how he would have wanted it. Come home for Christmas. Bring the good knife and the sweater with the moth hole. The ewes are due the first week of January and I am no good with the lamp.