Painted watercolour design of two red octopuses whose tentacles curl together to form a heart, drawn on pale paper with a blue wash behind them.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two octopuses forming a heart

Colour · Flash

Two octopuses face each other in a symmetrical pose, with their long tentacles curling upwards and meeting at the centre to form a heart shape. The linework is dark and fine, with washes of red, orange and blue-grey giving the bodies and tentacles soft shading. The design sits centred on a pale background with a light blue wash beneath it.

Octopus Heart Tentacle Swirl Watercolour

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

Oriel, the tank in the old aquarium hall held water for the first time on Tuesday, and the two octopuses we moved into it have already settled their argument about the corner. Harbour, the pale one with the ink-blue fringe, took the rock. Ketch, the rust-red one who came up from the Sound pens with a torn arm, has spent three days patrolling the glass beside her like a night watchman.

Keep reading

Every morning they do the same thing. They lift their arms until the tips find each other across the gap, and then the arms knot and loop, curling inward in the neat little spirals the old engravers used to cut into brass, until the whole display looks like a heart someone drew with a wet brush. Mabel from the filtration crew says it is only chemical habit and a wish to be left alone. I said I would put that in the log, and then I did not.

The council wants them listed as breeding stock for the reef crews on the eastern shelf, and the form asks for a species, a count and a disposition. I have filled in the first two. Under disposition I wrote that they are a pair, and then I sat looking at the word for an hour. When I tapped the glass this evening both of them turned, and the red one lifted the curl at the tip of her arm and laid it against Harbour's, slow as a signature. Send me your opinion on the form. I am not sending it back until I have one.