Black and grey lion face tattoo with overlapping geometric black bars and white gaps, sitting on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion face with geometric blocks on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's face, with its eyes, nose and whiskered muzzle, is rendered in fine black and grey shading and framed by vertical rectangular blocks. Stippled dot-like texture builds the fur and the soft tones, while solid black bars and thin white gaps cut across the design. The tattoo fills the centre of the forearm against a dark background.

Realism Geometric Dotwork Forearm Lion Face Stripe

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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 closer and mind the candle, for Brother Anselm never once in his life set a lamp where it would be useful. You want the lion. Everyone wants the lion. Well, the lion came out of a psalter, and a psalter does not forgive a careless hand.

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Brother Tobias was copying the Psalms for the abbot's nephew in the winter the river froze. He had a pot of soot ink, a goose quill, and a dozen strips of old shutter wood he cut to keep his lines straight. When he finished the lion's muzzle he found he had stippled it with dots so fine a man could count the whiskers from the door. The abbot wanted the page scraped. Tobias, being stubborn, laid the wooden strips across the vellum to hide the error, and the lion looked out between them like a beast peering from a barred window.

The abbot came with his ring and his temper, and saw the eyes first. They were gold where the ink had thinned. He lifted the strips away one by one to get at the page, and every one he moved let a little more of the beast through, until it stared at him full in the face. The abbot, who had not once in forty years been looked at by anything that failed to blink, went quietly down onto his knees on the cold flags.

The psalter is still on the shelf in the north cloister. The strips were never put back, and their shadows still cut the page straight across. Brother Anselm says the lion only shows itself to those who lie about their copying. I have never lied about a copy in my life, so I have never seen him, and that is the only comfort I can offer you tonight.