Black and grey pencil drawing of a tattoo design with a skull, two roses, a raven, a rosary, a cross and a pocket watch, in a realistic shaded style.

Skull, roses and raven tattoo design

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pencil drawing of a skull with two shaded roses behind it and a raven perched at the top. Below the skull hang a beaded rosary, an ornate cross and a pocket watch with Roman numerals, all set on a ribbon banner. The work uses soft grey shading and fine hatching for depth, with a dark background that frames the composition.

Realism Skull Raven Rose Cross Pocket watch Rosary Banner Crow

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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

The clock on the landing had stopped again, the same as every week since the Pelhams took the top floor of Gull Rock House, and I climbed the stairs with my tin of oil and a rag tucked into my apron pocket. Mrs Pelham had given me her mother's jet rosary the first winter, and she kept it looped round her husband's pocket watch as though the two needed each other to keep time.

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The crow came with the house. Nobody knew who first fed it, but a black bird sat on the chimney stack every morning and watched the bay with one flat eye, and Miss Dorrit, who had kept the boarders before me, swore it had belonged to a sailor's widow long before it belonged to us. When I opened the attic window that Tuesday it hopped over the sill and walked straight to the dresser, as if it had come to check my work.

Mrs Pelham was not in her room. Her silver cross lay on the eiderdown, and beside it was a strip of paper written in her careful copperplate: wind the watch at four and the tide will keep its word. I had never once seen her write anything down. I eased the case open with my thumbnail. The hands had stopped at a quarter past nine, the hour the fog came in off the headland, and folded behind the face was a letter addressed to me.

I wound it. The crow lifted off the dresser and went out over the water, and when the church bell struck four I put the kettle on, took my pen, and crossed her name off the ledger.