Realism style black and grey tattoo of a lion wearing aviator sunglasses, with dreadlocks, a joint and beads, on the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion in sunglasses with dreadlocks on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a large realistic tattoo of a lion's head wearing aviator sunglasses, with long dreadlocks, a rolled joint in its mouth and strings of beads hanging below. The shading is soft and detailed, with fine strands of fur and hair rendered in greys and light brown tones. The design fills the upper arm and extends over the shoulder cap against a plain background.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Lion Sunglasses Bead

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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

The lion had worn the same pair of aviators since the Tuesday the council man came to measure the arches, and Mrs Okonedo at the fish stall said that was the only thing about him anyone could still trust.

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Otis ran the record stall under the railway at Bellmoor Road, where the vinyl lived in milk crates and his dreadlocks reached his shoulders in long, slow ropes. Every few steps the beads strung along them knocked together like a cheap wind chime. He kept an unlit roll-up tucked in the corner of his mouth, not for the smoke but because his mother had once told him a lion needed something to bite that wasn't a person. Nobody on the parade had ever seen him light it.

The council man had a clipboard, a red face and a plan to turn the arches into flats with a gym underneath. Otis listened to the whole pitch with his glasses on, then put on the old dub plate his father had cut in 1979 and turned the volume up until the pigeons lifted off the girders in one grey cloud. When the council man shouted over the bass, Otis only tapped the clipboard and said the sun was wherever he happened to be standing. It was not an answer, but it was the one he had.

The man left with his ears ringing. That evening the lion pushed the sunglasses down his nose for the first time in a month and counted the beads in his mane, one for every crate he had kept, and the number came to exactly the number of records still in stock. He pushed the glasses back up. Some things a lion does not need to see clearly.