Blue-grey octopus tentacle tattoo spreading across a woman's chest and shoulder, with a cameo pendant necklace and a coloured sleeve on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus tentacles across a chest

Chest · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of a woman's upper chest and décolletage covered in a large octopus design, with curling tentacles and suckers rendered in blue and grey ink. The linework is bold with soft shading that gives the tentacles depth, and a coloured tattoo is visible on the upper arm at the left edge. The black bra, silver chain, cameo pendant and rings sit against the blue ink, and the face is cropped out of the frame.

Chest Upper arm Octopus Tentacle Cameo Necklace Ring Sucker

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 customs man at Kell Bridge had stamped papers for thirty years and had never once looked twice at a fishwife's basket. So when the evening ferry came in with a sack that shifted of its own accord, he only sighed and held out his hand. The ferryman, Orrin Vale, set down a coil of wet blue rope. It unwound across the planks one arm at a time until the whole quay was dotted with suckers the size of farthings.

Keep reading

'It is my sister's,' Orrin said. 'She crossed the water last winter with her grandmother's cameo round her neck and a sealed letter in her coat. She asked that the letter be read on this side before she came over herself.'

'And where is she now?'

'Down there, mostly, with the rest of the family. The sea does not let anyone go easily. It sent the arms instead.'

The customs man broke the wax. Inside, in ink run pale by the damp, was a single line: count my arms before you let me land. He counted eight, and then, because the rule was the rule, a ninth that was only half grown and curled like a question. He stamped the papers, and the arms went down the steps one by one, turning once in the green water, pale rings showing dark and then gone.

After that the lamp at Kell Bridge was kept a little brighter on the evening tide. Now and then a shell with a small carved face washed up at the foot of the steps, and the customs man would pick it up, dry it on his sleeve, and set it on the windowsill beside the stamps he no longer needed.