Black and grey forearm tattoo of a lion face made from tree branches, set within a wooded landscape.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion face formed by trees on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a lion's face formed from interlaced tree branches and trunks, with a wooded landscape around it and what appear to be rocks or water at the lower edge. The linework is dark and detailed, with grey shading adding depth to the foliage and the lighter areas of the lion's mane. The design wraps along the forearm, with a large tree framing the lion against a dark background.

Forearm Lion Tree Branches Forest Landscape Rock Foliage

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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

Mind the step, the stones are wet, and don't let Brother Anselm hear you call it a cave, or he'll tell you about the lion, and then tell you again. Sit by the fire. Good. The lion is the reason the monks keep the east gate barred in winter, though not for the reason you'd think.

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The lion came down from the high pass the year the river froze. He was old, his mane gone the colour of ash, and he had lost his pride to a younger male on the scree above Hollin Mere. He walked into the beech wood below the abbey because the wood asked him nothing. The cellarer left a dish of milk on the flat stone by the spring, and the lion drank it, and that was the whole of their dealings for a season.

Then one February night Anselm, who copied psalms by the window and had no patience for animals, took a lantern down to drive the beast back over the ridge. He found it lying in the shallows where the water runs over the rocks, and the lion looked up at him and did not rise. Anselm sat down on a stone, because his knees were not what they had been. They stayed until the bell for matins, neither of them speaking, the water talking between them.

When the brothers went down at dawn the lion was gone, and in his place the old beeches on the slope had grown a face. Branch and trunk knotted themselves into a mane, and the roots folded around the rocks like paws. Anselm drew it on vellum the same week, though he never finished the page, because every time he looked up from the desk the wind had moved the branches and the face had changed its mind. So if you go up at dusk, look where the light lies on the spring. Leave a dish of milk. Don't ask it anything. It has heard enough from men.