Back of a person's neck and shoulders showing a black and grey octopus tattoo with dotted shading, with a colour rose tattoo on the upper arm at the left.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus tattoo across the upper back and neck

Dotwork · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large octopus with spread tentacles covers the upper back and extends up onto the nape of the neck. The grey shading uses fine stippled dots and soft wash on the tentacles, with dark outlines defining the suckers and curls. A colour rose with red petals and green leaves is visible on the upper arm at the left edge of the frame.

Dotwork Back Neck Upper arm Octopus Tentacle Rose

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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

Sit closer, the wind up here takes words off the end of your tongue. You want the tale of Hessa the salt carrier, who crossed the Ferro pass every autumn with eleven mules and one stubborn notion, that the sea had forgotten her and she could go on forgetting it.

Keep reading

High on the far side of the pass lies a tarn so cold its stones never warm. Hessa stopped there to water the mules, and something rose out of the black water and laid its arms across the rocks. It was grey as wet slate, pocked all over with pale rings, and it watched her with a patience no fish has ever owned. It did not want her salt. It wanted the bells on the mules' harness, which it had heard ringing up from the valley for twenty winters.

Hessa was no fool, so she offered it a bargain. She unpinned the silver brooch from her shawl and held it out on her open palm. The creature took the brooch and gave her back a single bell, warm from its own grip, and then it curled one long arm around the lead mule's neck and asked for nothing more. The mule never knelt again, and the bell rang true every time, but it never once rang in the valley.

They say Hessa grew old crossing that pass, and when she died the mules walked up the road by themselves and stopped at the tarn. If you climb there at dusk, you will see the water lift, just once, into the shape of a spread hand, reaching for the path where the bells used to pass.