Black and grey realism tattoo of a lion's head with a flowing mane on the side of a torso, above the waistband.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head tattoo on the side ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's head in profile fills the side of the torso, with its mane rendered in dark, sweeping strokes that fade into the skin. The fine shading gives the face soft volume around the eye, nose and muzzle. The tattoo is entirely black and grey, set against a plain beige wall and a yellow towel.

Realism Ribs Lion Mane Big cat Animal portrait

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 mule would go no further past the salt flats, so Tamsin's father unloaded the water casks at the crossroads and told her to wait under the tamarisk. The road ran east to Halleh and west to a place nobody in the caravan would name, and the wind pushed grit against her shins until she stopped feeling it.

Keep reading

A lion came out of the heat at dusk. Its mane was dark and swept back as if a wind were lifting it, though the air lay still as cloth. It did not roar. It stood in the road with its eyes half closed, as though it were listening to something far off, and her father reached for the knife at his belt. The lion turned its great head and looked past them, toward the hills where a column of dust was rising.

The old women said a lion in the desert was a debt come to collect. Tamsin asked what was owed. Her father said nothing for a long while. Years ago he had sold the rights to the well at Ganith to a man who never drank from it, and he had told himself the well would keep. The lion lay down in the road with its muzzle on its paws, and the shadow of its mane stretched across the ruts like smoke.

The riders came up from the hills at a walk, their horses lame with thirst, and they stopped when they saw the animal. Nobody spoke. Then the lion rose and went to meet them, and its mane faded into the sand grain by grain as it walked, until only its eyes were left, and then only the road.