Octopus tattoo

[moominmuppet]

grf and I were rewatching the Nature: Discovering Sea Monsters show tonight, and it got me talking about a tattoo idea I've had for almost a decade. Given that I still need to finish my fertility figure tattoo, this is "someday", pie-in-the-sky contemplating, but I figured I'd write some of it down anyway.

I talked a bit in my last post about how continually amazed I am by cephalopods, especially octopuses. They're so perfectly, beautifully adapted; incredible, almost unbelievable physiology. So totally different from us, but it seems particularly hard not to anthropomorphize them, or at least to wonder what they're thinking. They just awe me, both for their beauty, and because of what their existence, down in their world on this planet, reminds me regarding the incredible breadth and beauty of evolutionary processes and natural environments.

So, those are some of the major reasons I'd be interested in an octopus tattoo. In fact, several of my tattoos are partially appreciations of certain types of animals -- my snake Pookie's pattern on my hip, the swallowtail kite on my ankle, the bats in the wu-fu on my back (all in need of color touch-ups these days -- frustrating that browns and reds are my favorite colors, and also the colors most likely to need regular recoloring). One of the other things that fascinates me about the idea of an octopus tattoo particularly is the shape. The amorphous, free-flowing, frankly squishy nature of their bodies. One of the interesting challenges regarding tattoos and my body is figuring out from scratch what types of shapes and lines work with my shape -- it's not just about scaling up approaches that work on slender bodies -- very different lines, shapes, folds, etc. It's not particularly easy to find images of heavy women with large tattoos designed to work with the shape of their body, although there are innumerable images of more slender women who have used large pieces with the lines and curves of their bodies in gorgeous ways. The thing that hit me back when I first started thinking about this piece was the similarity in shape and texture between my breasts (which are large and decidely pendulous) and an octopus head/mantle. I know I want a very realistic, detailed Giant Pacific Octopus, which is usually a beautiful, deep red-brown (incidentally a match for the dominant color scheme in my other tattoos). I have to figure out exactly how the proportions of the piece will sort out -- given that I have a specific size for the mantle and head, I would need to figure out exactly how large that would leave the webbing between the arms, and how long the arms. The webbed portion (anyone know if that has a name? I can't find one) would come up across the top of my right breast and shoulder, and over to the top of my back on that side. The arms could wrap almost anywhere that won't conflict with other pieces (given the infinite flexibility of the arms, I can conceivably even create an interaction with other pieces -- I'm particularly thinking of wrapping one or two of the arms around the wu-fu on my back). Most likely I'd bring some across my belly and right side, some down my back on the right side, and maybe down across my upper buttocks. I'd definitely bring at least one, maybe two, down my right arm. I might have to make some decisions about my right hip and leg -- there's another large-scale piece for that entire leg that I've had ideas about for closer to 15 years. I'm not positive I'm as attached to that one these days, though, and proportionally it may well make more sense to bring some of the arms down that hip and leg.

If I were to get this tattoo, sometime down the line, it would use up most of the remaining "unclaimed" space on my body -- the fertility figures (I don't actually like that over-simplifying, inaccurate term, any more than I like "goddesses", but it's how most people think of them, and there isn't a simple term to use in substitution -- "images of the female form in sculpture throughout human history" doesn't roll of the tongue) -- um, anyway, after that overly long paranthetical -- the "fertility figure" tattoo currently covers my upper left arm, left shoulder, and left back, and is slated to progress down over my hip to about my knee. I'm a little nervous about running out of skin; I'm only 32, I'd expect there will be other significant pieces I'll want over the course of my life.

Anyway, just wanted to write that all out -- I used to keep a separate tattoo journal for ideas and reference listings (I was showing Grafton the paper binder version of it earlier, actually) -- I find the better I document ideas, the easier it is to come back to them and decide whether they still suit me, or whether I want to develop them in new directions. It's also where I note particular technical problems -- how to get certain perspectives, or put together various artistic styles, or fit a certain part of my body, so I remember to talk to my tattoo artist about them. It's been too many years since I've gotten new work, but I do find the approaches I found for myself when I was a teenager and twenty-something do still work well for my purposes.