Colour tattoo of a stylised lion cub in blue, teal, orange and red, with black shading around its outline, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised lion cub on upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A stylised lion cub in a crouching pose fills the upper arm, drawn with bold black outlines and a soft black shadow halo. The body is shaded with blended blue, teal, orange and red ink, giving a soft, airbrushed look. The tattoo sits centrally in the frame against plain skin, with a white garment and a studded strap visible at the edges.

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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

Mind the gate, it sticks, and sit where the sun can reach your knees. Now. The cub came down from the hills the year the apricot wall fell over, and he was not yellow like the lions in the picture books. He was the colour of the sky just before rain, teal at the shoulders and blue along the flank, because the kingfishers had lent him their feathers to cross the water and never asked for them back.

Keep reading

Behind him the dusk came up orange over the roof of the old orangery, and the dusk got into his tail, which curled round like a question nobody had answered yet. He crouched in the rhubarb bed with a black ring of shadow around him, the kind that follows a creature who has lost its way, and he looked at the house for a long time without saying anything at all.

Your great-grandmother kept a cup for him on the back step. Every evening she filled it with rain from the butt, and every morning it was empty, though nobody ever saw him drink. The gardeners swore it was a fox. She said a fox would have taken the cup.

So when the storm brought the wall down, it was the cub who set the first brick back in its place with one paw, while the rest of us stood holding our hats and looking at the sky. Hold your hat now. That is the whole of it, and the rain is starting, so mind your shoes on the path going in.

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From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.