Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a snarling lion with raised claws above a red rose, sitting on the calf.

Snarling lion and rose on a calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Colour · Photo

A snarling lion with a full mane and bared fangs is shown above a large red rose with green leaves. Bold black outlines, smooth colour fills and soft shading on the lion's face and mane give it a strong, graphic look. Red, orange, yellow and teal ink dominate against the pale skin and a brick wall behind the leg.

Neo-trad Calf Lion Mane Claw Rose Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lion arrived in Thornbury on a wet Tuesday, and by Thursday half the town had decided he was a liar. Mr Cole's bill had promised a beast with a mane like a burning haystack and teeth that could open a tin of paraffin, and the handbills were glued to every lamp post on Market Street before the paste had dried. Nobody had thought to ask the lion what he made of it.

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My father painted the signboard for Carver's Travelling Menagerie, because he was the only man in the county who could make a red rose look wet. He let me hold the brushes. He said a rose was easy if you were honest about the petals, but a lion was harder, because a lion was always pretending to be angrier than it was. I watched him fill the mane in ochre and gold, the black outline running round each whisker like a stitch, and I thought he was making the lion look fierce. He said he was only telling the truth about the teeth.

On the Friday the roaring stopped. Ashby, the keeper, came to our back door with a cup of tea gone cold and said the animal had been sitting with its face to the wall since dawn. My father put down his palette and went with him. I followed, carrying the pot of vermilion because nobody had told me to leave it behind.

The lion was not sulking. It stood with its great head lifted, staring through the bars at the painted rose on the board as though the flowers might answer back. Ashby said it had done the same at every town since spring. My father took the brush from my hand, dipped it once, and touched a single petal on the outside of the cage. The lion lowered its head and closed its eyes.