Black and grey realistic lion head tattoo with a full mane, shown on the arm or leg with the lion facing forward.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic lion head on a limb

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A large, detailed lion's head faces forward, with a full mane shaded in soft gradients that fade into the skin at the edges. Fine hair-like strokes and smooth tonal shading give the eyes, nose and fangs a photographic depth. The design is entirely black and grey and fills most of the frame on a vertically oriented limb.

Realism Other Lion Lion head Mane

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 big top has a tear along the north seam now, and the rain comes through in a thin grey thread onto the sawdust. You have been told twice this week that the lion is too old to tour, and both times you nodded and went back to the cage with a bucket of meat that smelled of yesterday's rain. His name is Absalom. He has a mane like a burnt-out hedge and eyes that look past the rail to the car park, where the lorries wait with their engines ticking.

Keep reading

Mr Pettifer wants the act sold to a zoo in Kent for the spring. He has a letter with a crest on it and a handshake he offers before you have read a word. You read the letter on the caravan step with the wind lifting the corner of the page. Forty pounds a week for the animal, and the rest of the troupe to find their own winter. You fold it into quarters and push it into your boot, where the damp will get it first.

That night you sit with him. The ring lamps are off and the only light is the sodium glow over the gate. He comes to the bars and rests his great head against the steel, close enough that you feel his breath, warm and smelling of straw. You tell him about the sea, which you have never seen, and he listens the way he listens to the trainer's whistle, not moving, deciding nothing.

In the morning the tent is still standing. You open the cage door, which you are not supposed to do, and walk him out across the wet field toward the hedge, one slow step after another, until the lorries are small behind you. He stops at the gap in the hawthorn. He looks back once, then goes through it, and you stand in the wet grass with the empty lead in your hand while the rain finally stops.