Black and grey dotwork jellyfish on one forearm and seahorse on the other, both filled with mandala-style patterns.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Jellyfish and seahorse on forearms

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two tattoos sit side by side on the forearms: a jellyfish with trailing tentacles on the left and a seahorse on the right. Both are built from stippled dots and fine lines, with circular mandala motifs filling the bell of the jellyfish and the body of the seahorse. The shading is entirely black and grey against a dark, textured background.

Dotwork Geometric Forearm Jellyfish Seahorse Mandala Sea creature Tentacle

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

The big top has been folded for three weeks and still the canvas smells of diesel and rain. You are the one who drives the van to the harbour each morning, because Mrs Okonedo says the tanks need fresh water from the tide and nobody else will wade out past the groyne in February. The circus used to be called Halloran's Marvels. Now it is called nothing at all, just a painted board propped against the caravan with the name half sanded off.

Keep reading

The last act is the sea tent. Two tanks, bolted to a trestle, lit from underneath. In one, a jellyfish the colour of pewter pulses through the water with its tentacles trailing like wet thread, and on the glass someone has painted a ring of circles so it looks more like a clock than a creature. In the other lives a seahorse that Mrs Okonedo calls Dorrit, after a dead aunt, which curls its tail around a single strand of weed the way a pickpocket holds a purse.

On the final night the generator fails during the second house. The lights drop and the audience goes quiet, and in that dimness the tanks are all there is: the jellyfish's bell lifting and falling, Dorrit turning slowly to face the crowd. Somebody's child says the sea is breathing. You switch on the torch you were meant to keep for the dive and let it fall on the glass, and the old woman laughs properly for the first time in months.