Black and grey realistic octopus tattoo across a shoulder and upper back, with tentacles curling over the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus tattoo across a shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large octopus is tattooed across the shoulder and upper back, with its head near the top of the shoulder and tentacles curling down and around the arm and shoulder blade. The linework is soft and the body is shaded with fine stippled texture that gives the skin a realistic, three-dimensional appearance. The tattoo is entirely in black and grey ink against the pale skin, and the photograph is taken close up with the subject's face out of frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marjorie, the pear crop came in heavy this year and Mr Tully's boys have been hauling crates down to the harbour since Tuesday, so you'll forgive the state of my hands. I write from the back room of the Ship and Anchor because the landlady lets me use her ink and I have a notion to send you something that smells of salt. Yesterday, on the quay at Brixham, a fishmonger's lad pulled a sack from the hold of the Greyling and out slid an octopus the size of a cartwheel, grey as a wet slate, arms coiled round the sack like it meant to stay. Nobody had the stomach to cut it free, so the mate fetched a bucket of seawater and we watched it drift from the bottom of the bucket to the rim and back again, testing every edge. It looked at me, Marjorie. I swear it did, with those flat gold eyes, and I thought of your father's orchard wall and how he used to say the ground keeps what it's given. The octopus didn't keep anything. By dusk it had worked the lid off the bucket and was gone down the slipway into the dark water, one arm after another, like a glove being pulled off a hand. I'll be home for the apple picking. Keep a ladder against the north wall for me, and don't let the wasps have the windfalls.

Keep reading

Yours in haste, Tom

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