Realism tattoo of a lioness face with amber eyes and whiskers, shaded in black and grey on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lioness face tattoo on upper back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large, detailed portrait of a lioness face fills the centre of the upper back, shown from the front with ears, eyes and whiskers clearly drawn. The linework is soft and the form is built with smooth grey shading, with dark tones around the eyes and nose and lighter highlights on the muzzle. Small amber tones in the eyes are the only colour, so the piece reads almost entirely as greyscale against the skin.

Realism Back Lion Big cat Portrait Whiskers

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 lioness came up through the Bramley rows on the last Saturday of August, when the windfalls were already splitting and the wasps had got drunk on them. My father saw her first from the ladder. He didn't shout. He just stood very still with a half-picked Discovery in his hand and said my name the way you'd say a word in church.

Keep reading

She was grey as wet slate, the colour of the barn roof after rain, and her eyes were the only warm thing in the orchard, two drops of amber tea held up to the light. The fur at the rims of her ears caught the sun. She had walked out of the Harcourts' menagerie lorry at the crossroads, where the travelling fair had broken an axle the night before. Mr Harcourt came pedalling after her on a bicycle with no brakes, swearing at the hedges.

She didn't want the apples. She wanted the shade under the oldest tree, the one with the split trunk that Gran said had been planted the year the church bell cracked. I brought her a bucket of water. She drank with great neatness, then lay down with her chin on her paws among the grass and the fallen fruit, and the wasps went quiet around her as if someone had turned down the volume.

Mr Harcourt arrived red-faced and ashamed, and when he saw her lying there he took his cap off. "She's never once come to anyone," he said. "Never." We waited together until the lorry came back at dusk. Before she climbed in she turned and looked at me, long and level, and I understood she had picked this orchard the way you pick a place to be quiet. I still keep a windfall from that tree on my windowsill, gone hard and grey as her coat.