Realism tattoo of a lion head with green eyes, a dreadlocked mane and small beads, on the upper thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic lion with dreadlocks on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A lion's head faces forward with green eyes, a dark nose and whiskers, framed by a mane of dreadlocks that fall past the jaw. Small red, yellow and green beads are threaded through the locks at the crown, sides and chin. Shading is soft and detailed in browns, tans and ochre, with the lion filling most of the frame on the upper leg.

Realism Thigh Lion Mane Bead Whiskers Green eye

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the lift, it still has opinions. This is about the lion who lived on the eleventh floor of Harrowgate Tower after the flood took the ground floor carpets. Nobody saw him come in. He was simply there one winter morning, sitting on the fire door with his mane piled past his jaw like wet rope, and the old women said he had climbed the stairs because the stairs were the only road left that wasn't underwater.

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He wore beads in his locks, red and gold and green, threaded on wire, and every child in the block wanted one. He would not give them away. He would only trade, and the price was always a story, the true kind, the kind you can't tell at the school gates. So the boy from flat 40 told him about his father's van. The girl from number 12 told him about the night she sang to the gas meter. And the lion listened with those green eyes that never blinked when the lights went out.

Then the council came with their clipboards and said the tower would be coming down by spring. The lion said nothing. He went up to the roof, the highest point in the borough, and sat with his back to the wind while the whole estate gathered below to watch, as if he might roar the concrete down or hold it up.

He did neither. He gave the last bead to the boy from flat 40, took the boy's story in exchange, and walked down the stairwell one step at a time, and that was the last anyone saw of him. The boy kept the bead. It is still in his pocket, and the block is still standing.