Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull beneath a Roman numeral clock face, with swirling shading, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and Roman numeral clock on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large skull sits beneath a clock face with Roman numerals and ornate scrollwork, with smoky shadows wrapping around the design. The linework is soft and the shading is detailed, with strong contrast between deep blacks and light greys across the bone and dial. The tattoo fills the frame against a plain beige background, with a green sleeve visible at the top left.

Realism Forearm Skull Clock Roman numeral Smoke

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 closer, the lot of you, and mind the fire, because this is the part where the old clockmaker comes up the lane. Hollin's Wood starts where the last stile gives out, and in those days a man could walk from the cottages to the trees before his supper went cold. Thomas Vell lived at the edge of it with a workshop full of brass, and every clock on his walls ran a little fast.

Keep reading

He told the parish it was a fault in the escapement, but he knew better. Each evening a tall figure in a grey coat stood among the birches, watching the lamp in his window, and each evening Vell counted the hours left to him against his dial. He would not let the figure in. So he cut a great face of Roman numerals from yew, hung it over his door, and set a skull in its hollow to keep count for him.

The skull grinned at him through a year of fair weather. Then, on the first hard frost, the hands stopped at a quarter past eleven and would not move, not for oil, not for prayer, not for the forge boy who swore he could hear the gears crying inside the wood. Vell walked out to the trees in his shirtsleeves to make his bargain back. He found only his own coat hung on a birch, and somewhere in its pocket a small brass wheel turning, very slowly, the way a heart does when it has decided to stay.