Black and grey tattoo of an octopus with tentacles wrapped around a bicycle on an upper arm, shown in close-up beside a grey sleeveless top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus and bicycle tattoo on an upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large octopus with curling tentacles covers the upper arm, with a bicycle drawn in fine outline behind its body and wheels. The octopus is shaded with dense hatching and soft tonal greys, while the bicycle and some tentacle edges are rendered in crisp, thin linework. The image is a close, angled view of the arm, with the design wrapping around the outer upper arm and the person's face outside the frame.

Upper arm Octopus Bicycle Tentacle

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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

Pass me that flask, Dev, and mind the wind, it's been trying to take my hat since the lift broke. Right. Where was I. Ah, the octopus on Gallows Court, the one that came up from the canal the spring the council cut the bus route.

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Ivy Okonedo, who lived on the eleventh floor of Harrow House, said the thing had been living under the lock gates for years, eating shopping trolleys and the odd wedding ring. Nobody believed her. Then Mr Pryce from the chip shop lost his bicycle, the old black Raleigh with the bell that rang like a dropped spoon, and two days later it turned up in the middle of the car park, with the thing sitting on the saddle as if it had paid for the ride.

Eight arms round the handlebars, Dev, and every sucker holding on like a bairn at a fairground. It pedalled, mind. Not well. It went round and round the bins in the rain, and the kids came down from every balcony to watch, and the thing looked up at them with that one great eye and seemed, I swear it, pleased with itself.

Then the lift came back on and it was gone, and the bicycle was propped against the door of Ivy's flat, bell polished bright, a bit of wet weed hanging off the spokes. Ivy never said a word about it. But the next morning Pryce found a packet of ham stuck to his door and a note in wobbly capitals that said THANK YOU FOR THE LOAN. Nobody here has seen the octopus since. We only have the bicycle, and it still rings.