Black ink line drawing of a squid with a dotted stipple shading and spotted tentacles, shown as a tattoo design in Dotwork and Fine line style.

Squid with stippled tentacles

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A squid is drawn in black ink with its mantle angled up and to the left, a large round eye and curling tentacles hanging below. The outlines are fine and consistent, with stippled dots shading the mantle and tentacles and solid black spots decorating the inner tentacles. The image is black on white with generous empty space around the figure.

Dotwork Fine line Tentacle Eye Sea creature

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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

The boat came in on the Tuesday tide with its nets mostly empty, and Eddie Trewin had one thing tangled in the last haul that he wouldn't stop talking about. It was a squid, long as my forearm and the colour of old candle wax, with one eye open the size of a saucer. Eddie swore it was looking at him. I said squid had no opinions, but I took the knife off its hook all the same.

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The auction was still an hour off, so we laid it on the slab under the striplights. Its arms curled in on themselves like the spring of a dropped watch, speckled down the inner length with black pips that looked painted on. Eddie wanted to sell it to the aquarium in Plymouth. I wanted to put it back, which is not a thing you can say to a man who has already told the whole harbour about his catch. When he touched the mantle, a dark thread of ink ran off the slab and the hosing water turned the colour of weak tea.

We argued until the gulls got bold. In the end we wheeled it out to the end of the breakwater in the barrow, and I tipped it over the edge with my own two hands. It went down slow, arms trailing, the spots catching the light like sequins on a dress nobody wore to church. Eddie said nothing for once. I stood there with the barrow handle cold in my palm.

Next morning the net came up with a single curled tentacle caught in the mesh, neat as a ribbon, and no body at all. Eddie pinned it to the wheelhouse wall beside the calendar. Nobody asked him to take it down, and nobody asked me why I wouldn't look at it.