Black and grey dotwork drawing of a crab with a central eye, set inside a circle with geometric construction lines and lettered points, shown as a tattoo design.

Crab with an eye in a geometric circle

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A crab is drawn in stippled dotwork, with its claws raised and legs spread around a large open eye on its shell. A thin circle and fine construction lines with lettered points (A to I) frame the crab in a symmetrical, diagram-like composition. The drawing uses only black ink and grey tones on a pale background.

Dotwork Geometric Crab Eye Circle Geometric line

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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

Come closer, the lot of you, because this is the bit about the crab on Mrs Okonedo's wall and nobody tells it right. Fourteenth floor of Halstead House, the lift that smelt of wet coats, and a man called Ivo Penrose who measured everything. He measured the stairwell, the ducts, the distance from the bins to the bus stop. He drew it all on squared paper and pinned it up with drawing pins, and the pins rusted into the plaster so you can still see them.

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Then one winter the sea came up the Thames further than anyone expected and the river took the bottom two floors of the car park. Ivo said it was a sign. He said the crab was the old star of the city, the one you could only see when the water went out, and he drew it in the middle of his circle with points A to I marching round the edge like a clock nobody wound. Every point was a street that had gone under. A, B, C, all the way round to H, and I was the bit he left empty for whoever came next.

On the last night he was up there alone with his compass and a flask. The lift stopped at fourteen and didn't open. When the caretaker finally got the doors apart, the drawing was still pinned to the wall, but the crab's eye was looking straight at the door, and the paper beside it was damp and smelt of salt.

So mind the stairs, and if you ever find an empty letter on a wall, don't you dare fill it in.