Purple line drawing of a leaping lion pierced by two arrows, with a banner reading BE NOT AFRAID across its body, in a traditional tattoo flash style.

Leaping lion with arrows and banner

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A lion leaps to the right with its tail curled up, pierced by two arrows entering its side. A ribbon banner across its body reads BE NOT AFRAID, and its mane and face are drawn in engraved-style hatching. The design is a single mauve-purple ink on a plain cream background, with the lion fully visible and no body or skin shown.

Traditional Lettering Lion Arrow Banner Lettering Mane Tail

Find an artist for this

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

The lion came up the lighthouse stairs at a quarter past three, which is the hour I write the log, so I can set it down exactly. Three hundred and eleven steps, each one slick with spray from the gallery door, and at every landing it stopped to look back at me with the patience of a thing that has crossed an ocean in a crate. Two arrows stood in its flank. A boy from the Wrackmoor fishing families had fired at it on the shingle, thinking it a wolf off the wreck of the Adelaide, and had hit it twice before running for his mother.

Keep reading

I did not know what to do with a lion. My wife would have known. She knew what to do with everything the sea sent up the beach, including a drowned curate and a parrot that could recite the psalms. I knelt on the iron grating, took hold of the first shaft and drew it out slowly. The beast only breathed through its teeth and watched the lamp. The second arrow came free with less fuss. I packed the wounds with lint and the last of the brandy I keep for the cold, and the lion lay down across the doorway as if it had always meant to.

In the morning the wind dropped and the sea went flat as pewter. From the gallery I could see what was left of the Adelaide's travelling show: a cage split open on the rocks, a striped awning snagged on the Ness, and a painted ribbon of cloth that read BE NOT AFRAID, which someone had clearly meant as advertising. I thought it a poor motto for a show. I thought it better than most of the ones I had been living by.

When the boat from the mainland came for the lion at noon, it climbed down the stairs without complaint. At the bottom it turned once, the way a dog turns to be sure you are following, then leapt out through the door into the light and cleared the wet stones in one long stretch. I watched until it was a mauve smudge against the headland. The rail still carries the scrape of its claws. I have not had it painted over.