Black and grey realism and dotwork tattoo of a lion's face with mandala patterning and a small skull on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion and mandala on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's face is shaded realistically in black and grey on the left side, with fur, whiskers and a detailed eye. The right side turns into fine dotwork and ornamental mandala patterns, with a small skull at the edge. The tattoo wraps the forearm against a plain white background, and the lighting is even.

Realism Dotwork Forearm Lion Mandala Skull Ornamental Big cat Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The commission was for a lion's head over the gate of the Fenwick almshouses, and Tobias Crane had cut the near half of it by the first week of March. The eye was done, the brow was done, and the whiskers stood out from the stone like wet grass. Then the trustees' money stopped at the bottom of a ledger, and the lion was left with one face and a blank.

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His daughter Ines, who was nine and had no patience for half-finished things, took his chisel to the far side while he slept. She did not carve a lion. She carved what she had seen in the lace of the chapel screen: rings inside rings, petals made of dots, and a small skull at the edge where the jaw should have been, because her grandmother said the dead like to keep watch from the corners of gates. She worked three nights by the harbour lamp, and the dust settled on her hair like flour.

When Tobias came down to the yard on the fourth morning he stood a long time with his hands in his coat. The fishing boats going out past the breakwater could see the gate from the water, and some of the crews swore the lion was looking at them while others swore it was looking away. He did not take the chisel back. He wrote to the trustees to say the commission was complete, which it was, though not in the way they had ordered.

The trustees paid in the end, out of embarrassment, and nobody has ever asked the girl to finish the other side.