Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a lion head with a flowing orange, yellow and blue mane on a calf, against a red brick wall.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Colourful lion head on a calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Colour · Photo

A lion's head faces forward, with a broad nose, whiskers and a white-tipped beard, framed by a wide mane of flowing feathered strands. Bold black outlines define the features and fine interior lines suggest fur, while the shading moves smoothly between orange, yellow, pink, red and blue. The design fills the leg from top to bottom and is photographed against a red brick wall.

Neo-trad Calf Lion Lion head Mane Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lion on the Tremlett Brothers' fairground booth had faded to the colour of weak tea by the time Ruth was called in to repaint it. Her father had painted it in 1962, and nobody since had dared touch the mane. She climbed the stepladder at the back of the Hastings depot with a tin of primer under one arm and a jam jar of brushes clinking in her coat pocket, and stood eye to eye with the great beast while the wind off the Channel rattled the canvas flaps.

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The orange was the first problem. The chandler in Rock-a-Nore had stopped stocking the cadmium she needed, so she mixed what remained in the shed: a splash of marigold from old boat varnish, a dollop of pink from a sample pot labelled Nan's Bathroom, and a blue so dark it looked like the sky before a squall. She worked the mane one feathered strand at a time, letting each colour bleed into the next while the paint was still wet, the way her father had taught her before his hands began to shake.

On the last evening the eyes were all that remained. She had saved them for the end, the way you save the good biscuit. Two amber dabs, a single black line for each lid, and then she came down the ladder and the whole head seemed to lean forward into the lamplight, as if it had been waiting all winter to be let out of the shed.

Dessie, the fair's manager, came round the corner at dusk with grease on his cuffs and whistled low. "Dad's lion," he said. "Looks like it's about to roar." Ruth wiped her hands on a rag and shook her head. "It's waiting for the gates to open," she said, and for once the paint behaved.