Green line drawing on black of a Cthulhu octopus head with tentacles wrapped in chains, under blackletter lettering reading Cthulhu, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement.

Cthulhu octopus with chains design

Neo-trad · Colour · Flash

A stylised octopus-like Cthulhu figure with a domed head, hollow eyes and a central nose ridge sits at the centre of the composition. Its tentacles curl outwards and downwards, wrapped in chains, with a cross pendant and a ring hanging below and the word Cthulhu in blackletter lettering across the top. The linework is solid green on a black background, with dotted stipple shading on the head and tentacles.

Neo-trad Dotwork Octopus Tentacle Chain Cross Lettering

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

Mrs Agnes Thorold had forged chain for the Hull trawlers for thirty-one years, and she knew the sound a link made when it was about to fail. The morning the Margaret Ellen came in short a deckhand, the chain on her winch sang a note Agnes had never heard before, low and wet, like someone humming underwater.

Keep reading

The skipper, Dunn, who never took his cap off indoors, carried a crate up from the hold. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, sat a thing the size of a pumpkin, with a domed head and eyes like two shuttered windows. Its tentacles still twitched. "Caught it off the Dogger," he said. "Wouldn't let go of the ring." Agnes did not ask what else was in the net.

She wrapped it in her best chain, link by link, the way her father had taught her, and hung an iron cross from the last link so the smith's mark faced the water. The tentacles curled round the anvil leg and went still. For a month the harbour stayed quiet. Then the gulls stopped landing on the quay, and the tide began coming in an hour early, lapping at the forge door.

On the last night of the month the ring hung loose and the cross had turned to face the land. Dunn stood on the quay with his cap crushed in both hands. "It wants its chain back," he said. Agnes looked at the fire, then at the black water, and picked up her hammer. "Then it can come up and fetch it," she said, and she did not put the hammer down until the dawn tide had gone out.