Black and grey realistic tattoo of a skull with clock hands and Roman numerals across the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and clock on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large skull sits beneath a clock face with Roman numerals and sweeping hands, with a small pocket watch detail near the top. The skull is rendered with detailed shading, soft highlights and dark cast shadows that give it depth. The image is shown in black and grey only, with the design filling the upper arm and shoulder against a plain background.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Skull Clock Roman numeral Clock hand Pocket watch

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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 Hal, the snow has shut the Coach Road since Tuesday, so you must put up with this letter in place of my return, and with the blots, which are the fault of a very cold pen. Mrs Pell has given me the small room over the kitchen, where the flue keeps the damp off at least, and I have spent three evenings listening to the taproom clock not moving.

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It stopped at twenty minutes to four on the night the lamps guttered out. Nobody in the village will touch it. Old Garside says his father used to stop every clock in the house on the day someone was buried, and the taproom clock has stood still on that errand for longer than either of us has been alive. Mrs Pell only laughs and says the innkeeper's job is to keep the fire in, not the time.

Yesterday, with nothing better to do and a borrowed penknife, I opened the case. Beneath the brass movement there was a folded paper, no bigger than a playing card, in a child's careful hand: Wind me when the snow goes. Ten years of dust had softened it to the texture of cloth.

So I wound it. It ran for eleven minutes, ticking loud enough to startle the cat, and then it stopped again at the very same twenty minutes to four. I have sat with it since, watching the shadow of the hands crawl up the wall toward the skull Mrs Pell keeps on the mantel. This morning the wind dropped, and there is a rim of blue at the window. Tell your mother I will walk down the moment the carrier comes through. I expect I will find the clock still going when I get back, and that is the part I cannot tell you.