Black and grey realism tattoo of a lion's face with a full mane on the side of a finger, with red nail polish visible on the adjacent finger.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion portrait tattoo on a finger

Realism · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's face with a full mane is tattooed on the side of a finger, with the eyes, nose and muzzle facing forward. The shading is soft and detailed, with fine strokes in the mane and fur and graded greys across the face. The design is shown in black ink and greys against a pale skin tone and a dark leather surface.

Realism Hand Lion Mane Portrait Finger

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 windfalls had been coming down since Tuesday, and by the Saturday the wasps had the whole lower orchard to themselves. Uncle Ned sent me up the ladder in the Bramley row with a bucket and a warning about the sharp ones, but I was more interested in the gatepost stone he'd propped against the shed. Someone had carved a lion's head on it once, the mane worn to a rumple by a century of rain, the eyes still sharp enough to hold you.

Keep reading

I borrowed a soft pencil from the tin on the windowsill and drew it on the back of an old seed packet, kneeling in the grit of the yard with the paper on the wheelbarrow. Ned came out with two mugs of cider that tasted of vinegar and brown sugar and stood over my shoulder. "You've given him a worried face," he said. "Lions don't worry. They just wait." I rubbed at the mane with my thumb to make it darker, and the graphite smeared across the muzzle, so I had to go over the nose again, pressing harder, feathering the fur in short strokes the way the stone had taught me.

By dusk there was a lion on the paper that looked back at me, grey as the sky over the cider press. Ned turned the packet over, read the name of the apple printed on the other side, and laughed. He pinned it to the cider house door beside the tally sheets and said that was where lions belonged, among the barrels and the fruit that didn't make the cut.

Next morning the stone was gone from the shed. Only a paler square of ground showed where it had stood, and a single wasp was working over the rim of a windfall in the grass. The drawing was still on the door, its eyes holding steady against the damp wood, and I left it there, the way you leave a thing that has found its place.