Black and grey Traditional style tattoo of octopus tentacles rising from engraved waves beneath stars and clouds, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus tentacles rising from waves on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The design shows several octopus tentacles curling up out of stylised, engraved waves, framed by a rope border with leaf sprigs at the base. Stars and hatched clouds fill the sky behind, and a hand clasping a cuff sits at the bottom. The linework is bold and even, with dotted suckers and shaded wave lines, all in black ink on skin.

Traditional Upper arm Octopus Tentacle Wave Star Cloud Rope Hand Cuff

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

Pass the salt, and stop looking at me like that. I was sober the night we lost the Corvina's topsail off the Dogger Bank. Sober as a Methodist. The wind came on black from the north-east, and the moon kept tearing itself out of the cloud as if it had somewhere better to be.

Keep reading

Cook Halvard came up from the galley with his lamp in one hand and his tin cuff in the other, the brass one he wore to keep his knife off the wrist. He said he'd made a bargain with the sea years back, and the sea was owed a handshake. The lads laughed. Then the water to starboard heaved up in a long grey hump, and three arms came over the rail, freckled like a thrush's egg and curling slow as bracken in March. The first one found his hand before any of us could shout.

It didn't squeeze. That's what I remember. It took his hand the way my old aunt took a shilling from the vicar, gently and with some dignity, and turned the cuff round twice as if checking the hallmark. Halvard stood there in the spray grinning like a fool and said, "Told you so," to nobody at all. Then the arm slid back under the swell, the stars came out clean as sixpences over the wreck of our sail, and the wind dropped to a sigh.

We made Grimsby on the morning tide with a jury rig and not one man lost. Halvard never wore the cuff again. He hung it on a nail above the galley stove, where the steam kept it bright, and whenever the wind came round to the north-east he'd touch it with two fingers, the way a man checks his pocket for his purse. Mind, I never once saw him pay for a pint after that.