Realistic colour tattoo of a lion head with orange and blue halves and yellow eyes, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Split-colour lion head on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A lion's head fills the frame, with a fierce gaze, detailed fur and a whiskered muzzle. The left half is shaded in orange and the right half in blue, with streaks of yellow and purple through the mane. Soft blended shading and fine strands give the face depth against the skin.

Realism Upper arm Lion Lion head Mane Eye Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dora had been painting the big top's banners since Harrogate, and the lion was the only creature on the lot who would sit still for her. Mr Calloway wanted the poster to show the real animal, but Samson looked dull under the arc lamps, a tawny sack of fur with a tired jaw. So Dora mixed her ochres on the wagon step and found the cobalt she'd bought for a sky that never got painted.

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She gave the left side of his face the orange of the morning lamp that warmed the caravans, and the right side the blue of the field after the rides were switched off. Through the mane she ran streaks of yellow and violet, because she had never once seen a mane that was only one colour. Samson watched her through the bars with eyes like brass pennies, and when the brush touched the whiskers he blew a long breath that fogged the wire.

Calloway came to the wagon with the contract and stopped dead in front of the easel. He looked at the lion for a long time. Then he said the public would want a lion that matched the lion, and Dora said the public had never looked closely at anything in its life. He laughed, but he didn't tear the sheet up.

They loaded the cages in October, and Samson was sold to a menagerie in Leeds before the frost. On the last night Dora stood by the van with a rag in her hands. The painted panel on the side caught the lamplight, orange on one half and blue on the other, and the lion turned his head towards it and gave one low, considering note, as if he had met a stranger who knew him better than he knew himself. Then the ramp came up.