Black and grey vintage engraved octopus tattoo on the upper arm of a woman with blonde hair and a white lace top.

Vintage octopus on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large octopus is tattooed on the outer upper arm, with its head at the top and tentacles curling outwards and downwards. The linework is fine and the body is shaded with dense hatching, giving an old engraving look. The tattoo is in black and grey ink against warm skin, with the subject's shoulder and white lace top filling the frame.

Upper arm Octopus Tentacle Engraving 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

Dear Nell, The rain has been coming sideways off the harbour since Tuesday, and I am writing this under the awning at Pell Street with water running off my hat brim and into the ink, so forgive the blots. Mr Corran sent me down at six to buy the octopus Dr Lowe wants for his plate. What I found was Tamsin Roe laying out a grey brute the size of a cart wheel, its arms still lifting off the slab as though they were searching for the sea.

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She asked four shillings. I offered two, and she laughed and said the arms would keep moving for another hour, which is true. One curled round my wrist when I went to lift the sack, cold and deliberate as a clerk's pen. I paid the three shillings in the end and carried it back under my coat, and the whole way up the hill it kept shifting against my ribs like a thought I could not finish.

I laid it on the glass in the back room and worked by the lamp until the light failed. Hatching takes a long time on soft, pale flesh. Every sucker felt like a coin I was counting twice. By midnight the head was done, the mantle dark as wet slate, and the arms were the only part that would not keep still, always a fraction further across the paper than my pen had left them.

When Corran came down at dawn the page held no octopus at all, only a faint trail of inky rings running from the table to the back door, which stood open on Pell Street. The cobbles were printed with small wet circles, and the rain had stopped. Corran has the plate now and calls it the finest thing I have made. I have not told him that the arm on the paper is longer than I drew it, or that each morning this week there is a ring of wet ink on the windowsill, as if something has been leaning out to look at the rain. Your loving brother, Abel.