Black and grey realistic tattoo of a lion with a dreadlocked mane and small coloured beads on the upper arm and shoulder.

Realistic lion with dreadlock mane on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A realistic lion's head faces forward with a mane of long, dreadlock-like strands that fall around the face. The shading is soft and detailed, with fine whisker lines and defined eyes, and a few small red, yellow and green beads hang from the strands beneath the chin. The tattoo fills most of the frame on a bare upper arm, with a red-trimmed top visible at the edge.

Realism Upper arm Lion Mane Bead Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lion's mane was supposed to be the only thing anyone remembered about the wedding, and by half past two it was already coming loose. You stand at the back of the community hall in Hackney with a box of rice-paper confetti under one arm and a tin of painted beads under the other, because Aunt Joyce said the bride's family would want them strung on the veil cords and nobody else in the building knew how. The string keeps slipping. Outside, the bus to Dalston sighs past the window.

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Your cousin Marcus, who has never once been on time, arrives in a waistcoat the colour of old marmalade and asks where the lion is. The lion is a carved wooden thing, a gift from the groom's grandfather, who ran a shop on Kingsland Road selling records, rolling papers and anything else with a lion stamped on it. Its mane is real coiled cord, knotted by hand, and one strand has unpicked itself. Marcus wants to know if it can be fixed before the first dance. You say yes, because you have a reel of black thread and no real idea how.

You sit on the radiator with the lion across your knees and thread the needle by the light of the fire exit sign. The beads go back in the order Joyce taught you: red, gold, green, the colours from the flag her brother kept folded in a drawer. Each knot takes longer than the last. The bride comes looking for you, sees the lion in your lap, and laughs so hard she has to hold the doorframe.

When the speeches start you carry the lion back to your table and set it between the candles, its mane tidy again, one green bead catching the light from the paper lanterns. Nobody else notices the repair. Marcus raises a glass to the thing that holds everything together, and you decide that counts as a sign you did it right.