Realism-style lion head in black and grey shading, with a small gold pentagon on its brow, set inside a black triangle outline on the forearm.

Lion head and triangle on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A shaded lion head faces forward with a full mane, rendered in soft greyscale gradients and fine hair-like strokes. A small gold pentagon sits on the forehead, and a thin black triangle outline frames the lion on the inner forearm. The arm is photographed against a plain white background, with the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Realism Geometric Forearm Lion Mane Triangle Geometric shape

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 coat check at the Silver Crescent ballroom had three hooks for every cloakroom ticket, and Mr Leon Varga, who played trumpet with his hair swept back like a lion's ruff, never once used the middle one. He handed me his overcoat every Saturday at eight, and every Saturday I hung it on the left hook, the one nearest the stage door, because that was the rule Mrs Pryce had set down in 1929 and nobody questioned it.

Keep reading

On the first Saturday in October he came to the counter without his coat. "Keep this for me, Nell," he said, and laid a small brass pentagon on the wood between us, warm from his pocket. It was the size of a shilling, with a thin bright edge, and someone had scratched a triangle of three neat lines across its face, the same shape the carpet made at the corners of the dance floor. "If anyone asks for it, you tell them the lion was here."

Nobody asked. The band played through the Charleston and the foxtrot, the dancers stamped the boards loud enough to shake the chandeliers, and Leon never came back for the pentagon or his coat. In March the stage door was bricked up for the new cinema works, and the left hook stayed empty for a long while. I kept the token in the tin where we stored spare tickets, the triangle turned face up.

Last week a man in a grey mackintosh asked for a coat that had never been handed in. I went to the tin, held the brass to the lamp and said the words exactly as Leon had said them. He studied the scratched triangle for a long time before he smiled and said, "Then he did get out."