Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull and pocket watch with roses and leaves across a man's upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and pocket watch on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded skull with a pocket watch held against its jaw, set among roses, leaves and a ribbon banner. The skull and watch are rendered with smooth grey shading and highlights, while the leaves and roses use bold outlines and darker fills. Only black and grey ink is visible against a blurred background with a blue wall.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Skull Pocket watch Clock Rose Leaves Ribbon 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

Dorothea had been talking to the old hearse since Barstow, and Tomas had long since stopped answering, because the engine seemed to listen better than he did. The road ran straight into a heat that bent the horizon like wet paper. In the glovebox, wrapped in a handkerchief, lay the pocket watch they had taken from Harlan's coat, its case engraved with a ribbon and two roses shaded so carefully the petals looked damp.

Keep reading

The Roman numerals were worn pale at the top, and the hands had stopped at twenty to four, the minute the sheriff's letter gave for the accident. Dorothea would not let anyone fix it. She said a clock that told the right time for the wrong reason was no kind of clock at all. So they drove on past a gas station shaped like a giant boot, until the shimmer on the asphalt became a man leaning against a sign for Dry Creek Watch Repair, which had closed before either of them was born.

He was a stranger, which surprised Tomas more than it should have. He had a loupe screwed into one eye and a cigarette burning down between his fingers. He took the watch without a word, turned it over, and opened the back. Pressed flat against the movement was a second rose, dried brown, and a scrap of paper with the same twenty to four written in a hand that was not Harlan's. The man wound the mechanism once. The second hand shivered and began to move.

Dorothea paid him in cash and asked nothing. Back on the road she set the watch on the dashboard where the sun could reach it. Tomas watched the hands run on, past four, past the hour nobody had wanted to name, and at last she reached over and tapped the glass once, the way you might touch the shoulder of someone asleep in the next room.