Black and grey geometric lion tattoo with a dotwork-shaded mane and triangle outlines on the forearm, shown in two photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric lion on the forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A geometric lion's head is drawn in angular black linework, with its mane formed from sharp facets that fan out above the head. The face and mane are shaded with fine stippled dots, and a row of nested triangles sits beneath the lion on the forearm. The image shows two side-by-side views of the forearm against a pale, softly lit background, and the tattoo is entirely in black and grey ink.

Geometric Dotwork Forearm Lion Triangle Mane

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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

Sit down, the 9.14 is never before the half hour, and you've time for this one. You'll not find the lion on any timetable, mind. He lived above the booking hall at Carrowby Junction, cut in grey slate by a mason called Ada Pell, who had no patience for anything with a soft edge. She said a lion was only a cat that had made up its mind, so she cut his mane in shards, one facet for every sermon she'd sat through as a girl.

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The trouble came in the winter of the great frost, when the signal wires iced over and the stationmaster sent word that the 4.50 from Leeds had gone missing somewhere on the moor. Ada climbed out on the roof with a bag of chisels and a paraffin lamp, and she did not come down until dawn. Folk say she sat up there all night, picking fine stipple into the stone so the lamplight would catch every angle and throw a little spark down the line. The driver, a lad named Tom Garside, swore he steered by those sparks across the viaduct, following points of light he could never see the source of.

When they asked Ada how she knew which way to cut, she only tapped the slate and said the lion had told her where the edges were. Then she packed her chisels, caught the first train south, and nobody ever saw her again. The lion still watches the platform, all dotted and shadowed where the frost got in.

So when your train comes, look up at him. Don't wish, just count the points. Thirty-one, last I counted, and I've counted every night since.