Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull merged with a Roman numeral clock face and gears, on the chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and clock with gears on the chest

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo shows a skull overlapping a Roman numeral clock face, with clock hands and visible gear wheels around the skull and at the lower edge. The shading is detailed and smooth, with strong highlights on the skull and metal parts and soft grey tones in the background. The design fills most of the frame, with the torso visible at the edges.

Realism Chest Skull Clock Gear Roman numeral Clock hand

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 Harrowgate clock came into the shop on a Tuesday, its face cracked across the twelve and its movement packed with grease that had gone to grit. Nobody had wound it in thirty years. Mr Pellow tipped the mechanism onto a square of baize and sent me for the loupe, and when I came back he had already set the minute hand against the gap in the glass, as if he were measuring a wound.

Keep reading

I spent three nights on it. The great wheel had a tooth missing, filed down by someone who meant it to slip, and every pinion beneath it was scored in the same pattern, a little rake of steel marks, like the teeth of a comb pulled backwards. Pellow would not let me throw out the old gear train. He said the clock had been built to keep someone waiting, and that a thing built for waiting does not like to be hurried.

On the third night the escapement caught and the second hand began its slow walk round the Roman numerals. I stood with my hand on the case, listening to it tick against my pulse, and found that the wheels behind the dial had been cut to form a grinning shape, the spokes making ribs and the pinions forming the hollow of a jaw. Pellow saw me looking and laughed, quietly, the way he did at funerals. He wrapped the movement in tissue and told me the customer would collect it at midnight, and that I was not to be the one who opened the door.