Realism style black and grey tattoo of a roaring lion's head with a detailed mane covering the upper arm and shoulder.

Roaring lion head on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large lion's head with its mouth open in a snarl, showing teeth, a pink tongue and whiskers, fills the upper arm and reaches toward the shoulder. The tattoo uses soft grey shading and fine, detailed linework to render the fur, mane and eyes, with dark tones around the mouth and mane for depth. The ink is almost entirely black and grey, and the lion is framed centrally against the bare skin of the arm and chest.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Lion Roar Mane Teeth Whiskers 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

Sit down, sit down, and mind the wasps, they are drunk on the windfalls this time of year. You want the tale of the lion of Pell Orchard? Then hush, for he sleeps with one eye open, and his ears go up at the sound of a child chewing.

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He came over the stone wall in the dry August of 1911, a grey beast with a mane like wood smoke, and he sat down under the old Bramley tree as if he had paid rent on it. Farmer Tobias Greer fetched his shotgun from the kitchen. But when the lion opened his mouth, every tooth as white as peeled pith, Greer dropped the gun in the long grass and walked home for his tea without once looking back.

The lion did not eat anyone. He ate the split apples that had fallen in the night, and each evening he roared at the sky until the swifts scattered from the church roof. The wives of the village complained of the noise and the wasps that followed him. Only Greer's daughter Nell, who was nine and afraid of nothing with a wet nose, climbed the wall at dusk and sat beside him with her knees under her chin.

One evening the roar came, and it was not the roar of a beast who wants something. It was a shout, the last of a long summer kept in his chest. Nell climbed down in the blue light, and the lion was gone. There was only a paw print pressed into the dust and a single Bramley left on the wall, still warm from the day. So when you hear thunder rolling over the top field, that is him, shouting at the orchard to let go of its fruit. Now off to your beds, the lot of you.