A brilliantly inscribed thigh tattoo. With a huge bit of space to work with the artist has cleverly combined the ship with alternate fill colors (dig that bright green seawater) while allowing the massive sea creature to shimmy up from the depths and prepare to wreck it. The deft shade sails create excellent contrast against the other colors and show off the brilliant pattern of the boat. Working outward with color from the central negative space fashions a unique style of octopus. The tentacle’s curvature and alternative ridge lines complement the beast’s shape as well.

The bright, bubbling water is a real highlight of this lower forearm tattoo. Where it falls down is in the lack of defined outline. If I was the subject, a future trip to the tattoo chair would result in a bunch of fine black line additions to make the piece clearer, and i’d also add alternate shade effect to the suckers in order to give them some pop.

There’s great technical parts of this octopus ink – the neg space and line work looks fresh – however the eye is small and weak in comparing to the rest of the tattoo. The eyes, and the dark shading in general can be improved upon with white ink highlights.

This octopus tattoo has a tremendously unique – for this type of body art – alternating sharpie fill scribble and negative space to catch the eye with tentacle shading. Love how the head starts above shoulder to dominate the ship, and works down from there with strong flow and curves.

This octopus looks like it has come from a genetic experiment that gave it an elephants textured skin and a similar looking head. The concept is superb, however the abstract delivery gets in the way. Too many parts of the tattoo looking unfinished or unfocused and could do with stronger definition. A greater use of flair color filling could also help to promote the avant garde pattern effect yet still flesh out the art work.