Small black and grey realistic tattoo of a lion's head with a full mane, placed on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic lion head on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's head faces forward, framed by a full, shaded mane that fades softly into the skin around it. The fur is rendered with fine, feathered linework and smooth grey shading, with the eyes picking out pale yellow-green highlights. The tattoo sits centrally on a light skin background, with a dark garment edge visible at the right of the frame.

Realism Upper arm Lion Lion head Mane Big cat

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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 sketchbook had spent three days under bench seven before Mr Okafor from the cleaning contract brought it across the counter at Lost Property, and by then the cover had swollen from the rain that blew in under the canopy at Hebden Junction. I dried the pages on the radiator in the back office. Most were lions. Pencil lions, one after another, the mane worked in tight feathered strokes that thickened toward the jaw, the eyes left blank on every page except the last, where someone had shaded the irises with a stub of yellow-green pencil and then given up before the highlights were right.

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The name inside the cover said Ada Lusk, and under it, in smaller writing, Sundays, Platform 2. I rang the number and got a woman who said Ada had gone to Carlisle in the spring and that I was welcome to try the depot if I liked waiting on hold. I did not like it. So on the next Sunday I stood on Platform 2 with the book in a carrier bag and waited for the 14:10 to Leeds, which was late, as it always is on a Sunday.

A woman in a green anorak came up the stairs with a flask and asked whether I was the one with the lions. Her name was Bev, and she was Ada's sister. Ada drew in every notebook she owned and left most of them on trains on purpose, she said, because she liked to think of strangers finishing the mane. Bev took the book, turned to the last page, and laughed at the unfinished eyes.

I sat with her on the bench while the train came in, and I borrowed a grey pencil from my coat, and I did the shading along the mane because it seemed rude to leave it half done. When the doors opened, Bev put the book on the seat beside her, and the lion looked out through the window as the train pulled away.