Black outline tattoo of an octopus with dotted suckers and a mug-shaped vessel on the upper arm, shown against a dark top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus and mug on an upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black outline octopus with dotted suckers wraps around a mug-shaped vessel, with its head turned to the right and one tentacle curling down the arm. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the skin is shown in soft, greyish tones. The tattoo fills the upper arm, with the shoulder and a dark sleeve visible at the edge of the frame.

Upper arm Octopus Tentacle Mug

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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

Dear Priya, I nearly didn't come to the reunion. Then I found the mug at the bottom of the box marked KITCHEN, the one with the octopus you painted on it in Mr Dunn's art room the year you said the sea was the only honest place. The glaze has crazed round the rim and one tentacle has chipped near the handle, but the rest of it holds. I've been drinking tea out of it all week, which Gran would have called a waste of a good cup.

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Do you remember the lesson where we had to draw something we'd never seen? You drew an octopus wrapped round a teapot and said octopuses have no idea what a teapot is for, and that was the whole point of them. I thought you were showing off. I still think you were showing off. But I took that mug home, and it's the only thing from that year I didn't lose.

I'll be honest about the reunion. Dunn's still there, retired, sitting by the sports hall doors selling raffle tickets for the lifeboat fund. Nobody spoke to him much, so I did. He asked whether you still drew. I said you had a shop now, down in Whitby, putting things on people that would never fit on paper. He laughed and said it figured.

So here is my request. Come to the pub on Mill Street on Saturday and bring the sketchbook. I'll bring the mug, and you can tell me what the octopus was really thinking, because I have decided it was thinking about leaving.