Black and grey realism tattoo of a tiger's face and eye wrapping across the inner forearm, with stripes and whiskers.

Tiger face on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic tiger face is tattooed across the forearm, with the eye sitting near the centre and the muzzle and whiskers toward the elbow end. Stripes run over the top of the arm and fade into soft grey shading on the nose and cheek. The image is shot straight on against a white background, and the tattoo is the clear focus.

Realism Forearm Tiger Eye Stripe 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

The sign-writer, a man called Dolan who smelled of turpentine and bad cigarettes, painted the tiger over three wet days while the Regal Palais slept beneath him. Mr Haskell, who owned the place, wanted something to stop the Saturday lads leaning on the bandstand. I was sixteen and held the tins. Dolan said nothing frightens a boy like a cat with its head turned to look at him, so he gave it a face that stared straight down the room.

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He ran the stripes across the top of the wall in black, bold as railings, then dragged a rag of grey paint over the cheek until the fur looked more like weather than fur. The eye he left till last. He used a brush no thicker than a hair, and when I asked why it had to look so patient he said a tiger only needs one eye to know where everybody is in the room.

By the next winter nobody on the floor noticed it, except me. On Saturdays I stood by the cloakroom hatch and watched the eye pick out couples in the foxtrot, unhurried, as if it had seen all of it before and expected no better. Peggy Lund, who danced with her brother's friend every week and never once looked at him, came in one night with her coat over her arm and asked me if the tiger was looking at her. I said it was looking at everyone.

Then the fuse blew during the last waltz. The room went black except for the little red exit lamp, and in that dim light the painted eye was the only thing that shone. The band stopped mid-bar. Nobody moved. When the lights came back Dolan's grey cheek had a fresh smear across it, and the eye had turned a fraction towards the door, where Peggy was already gone. Mr Haskell wanted it painted over. He never did.