Colour tattoo of a roaring lion head with a red mane on the upper arm, shown in two close-up photos with a third panel placing the design over a lion's mane.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head tattoo on upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The top two panels show a large lion head with an open, roaring mouth and a flowing red and brown mane on the upper arm and shoulder. The linework is dark and bold, with shaded red and pink tones in the mane and face. The bottom panel is a composite that places the same tattoo design over a photograph of a real lion's golden mane.

Upper arm Lion Lion head Mane

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Pollard had painted the lion on the Crown's sign in 1962 and had never once been allowed to forget it, least of all by the lion. The sign showed a roaring head with a mane like a bundle of wet red rope, and the regulars swore it looked more like a lion that had been left out in the rain. Still, it hung above the door for forty years, and the landlady, Mrs Achterberg, said it kept the gulls off the step.

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Then the travelling menagerie came to the common in August, and with it a real lion called Duchess, who had a mane the colour of toffee and no opinion whatsoever about signs. Pollard walked the four miles out on a Tuesday, carrying a flask of tea and a sketch pad he never opened. He sat on the fence for an hour while Duchess lay in the straw and yawned at him, a yawn so wide it could have swallowed the Crown's whole sign.

"You're not what I drew," he told her finally.

The keeper laughed. "Nobody ever is, love."

When the new sign went up that autumn, the regulars stood in the road to argue about it. Mrs Achterberg said it looked like a lion who had been to the barber, which was fair, and she hung the old one in the snug where the gulls could not reach it. Pollard never said so, but he thought the old lion had been the more honest of the two.