Black and grey neo-traditional tattoo of a lion face with a lotus crown and dreamcatcher below, on the inner forearm.

Lion and lotus dreamcatcher on forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's face sits at the centre of this tattoo, framed by a lotus flower above and a feathered dreamcatcher-style ring below. The linework is bold and clean, with soft grey shading on the muzzle, eyes and mane, and fine dotted detail in the surrounding petals. The design is entirely black and grey and is shown straight on along the inner forearm against a plain pale wall.

Neo-trad Botanical Forearm Lion Lotus Dreamcatcher Feather Mane Mandala Whiskers

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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

The night the border guards took the bridge lamps down, my grandmother's cousin Tamar sat on her trunk at the edge of the cold river and waited for the lion. Everyone in the village knew the lion would come, because the lotus on the far bank had opened that week, and a lotus never opens for nothing. She had a bundle of brass keys in one hand and a dreamcatcher of willow and sinew in the other, the kind her mother hung above the cradle so the bad dreams would tangle in its hoop and not reach the children.

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The lion came out of the reeds with the mist on his mane like wet silver. He did not roar. He sat down on the mud, looked at her with those patient grey eyes, and asked her what she was carrying that was heavier than her trunk. She told him the keys were for houses that were no longer standing, and the net was for the nights she had not yet slept through. He lifted one paw, and the feathers along the ring of the net stirred as if a wind had come up from nowhere.

He carried her across on his back, though the river was deep enough to drown a horse, and she felt the warm weight of him under her thighs and the wind of the water on her face. On the far bank the lotus petals lay open on the black earth like a hundred small lamps. When she slid down, the lion was already gone into the reeds, and only the keys were left, hanging from the willow ring, one brass key for every door she had locked behind her.