Three photographs of a realistic colour tattoo of a lion's head with a full mane, covering the upper arm and shoulder of a man in a grey sleeveless top.

Realistic lion portrait on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a lion in three-quarter profile, with its head turned to the left and its mane spreading down and back across the shoulder. The fur is rendered with fine, layered strokes in tan, ochre and brown, with darker grey and black shading around the mane and under the jaw. Warm pink and red tones appear along the lower mane, and the three panels show the same piece from the front, side and back.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Lion Mane Big cat Portrait Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mabel, the lorry came up from the Malton road at ten past six, and the lion was still in the back of it, and he would not look at the platform. Harold Venn stood on the down side with his lamp and his watch and said the cage would have to be walked off the goods yard the proper way, with planks and a rope and no shouting. Lorimer, who runs the show, said the beast had been quiet since Scarborough and we should be grateful for it. I was not grateful. I was watching his head.

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He keeps it turned to the left, over his own shoulder, the way a man does when someone has called his name from a train he has missed. His mane spreads back over the shoulder of him like a spill of wet sand, nearly black underneath where the shadow sits, and when the cage door came open the whole mass of it lifted in the wind off the moor as if it had been waiting to be asked.

Nobody sent him anywhere. The Newcastle express was due at half past seven, and it was the only thing on the line he kept his eyes on. When the signal dropped and the rails began to hum, he stood up on his great paws, rust-pink in the last of the sunset along the ruff, and gave a single low note that went down the length of the platform and came back off the signal box. Harold said afterwards it was the saddest sound he had heard in twenty-two years of trains.

I have put the lamp in his cage for the night and left the door open a crack so he can see the line. He has not moved his head since.

Yours, Ada