Traditional colour tattoo of a snarling lion head with a black mane, bared teeth and red mouth, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Snarling lion head on thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A large lion head snarls towards the viewer, with bared fangs, a red open mouth and narrowed orange eyes. Bold black outlines define the features, and the mane is rendered in dark flowing strokes. Warm orange and brown shading gives the face volume against the skin, and the design fills most of the thigh.

Traditional Thigh Lion Lion head Mane Snarl Fangs

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are nineteen and the paint is still tacky on the lion when Mr Hollis tells you to go up the ladder and fix its mouth. The Ritz in Carrow Bridge has had a plaster lion over its door since the war, a beast nobody looked at twice, but the new manager wants it to snarl at the Saturday queue like it means business. Hollis hands you a tin of red lake and a brush worn to a point. "Give him teeth," he says, "and give him a temper."

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You work through the afternoon with the high street going on below. Mothers with prams, a bus grinding its gears at the kerb, Eileen from the chemist waving her umbrella up at you as if you were on the stage. You paint the gums first, then the fangs in cream with a yellow edge, the way Hollis showed you on the back of a menu. The eyes take longest. You make them narrow and amber, and when you climb down to judge them from the pavement, the lion is glaring straight across at the bakery as though it has been insulted.

On Saturday the queue turns to look up at the door, and a boy of about six stops dead and grips his mother's coat. You feel a small, ridiculous pride, as if you have coaxed the beast out of its plaster and into the world. Hollis does not say well done. He only sends you round the back to scrape the pigeon mess off the sill.

That evening you wipe the red from your knuckles and watch Hollis lock the side door. The street empties, the bus shelter goes dark, and the lion keeps its watch over Carrow Bridge, mouth open, daring the night to come any closer.