Black tribal lion head tattoo with bold solid linework and a flowing mane, on the calf of a leg with a white sneaker visible at the lower left.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal lion head on a calf

Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tribal-style lion head in profile, with a snarling mouth, a tapered eye and a mane of sharp, flowing spikes. The bold black linework has heavy, uneven fills and sits on the back of a lower leg against a dark background. The image is in black ink only, with a white sneaker partly visible at the lower left.

Calf Lion Lion head Mane Tribal

Find an artist for this

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

Idris had been told the lion over the gatehouse was the last thing the masons finished before the siege, and that its mane had been cut in a hurry. He climbed the scaffold at Caerfenn in the grey before the frost lifted, ivy furring the walls, and laid his palm against the cold face of the stone head. Its jaw was open in a snarl, one row of teeth broken away by a century of weather.

Keep reading

Mrs Pryce from the parish council had sent him up with a bucket of lime wash and orders to leave the carving alone. 'Nothing up there but jackdaws,' she said. But the lion's eye was not like the others on the wall. It was drawn to a narrow point, as if the mason had cut one sharp line and then decided it should look back over its shoulder at whoever passed under the arch.

He found the thing that mattered on the third day, when rain had scoured the mane clean. Each spike of stone curled back on itself and ran into the next, one long flowing line from brow to shoulder, and beneath the moss someone had scratched a row of small marks. Forty-one strokes. He counted them twice with his thumbnail while the wind moved the ivy.

He did not tell Mrs Pryce. He carried the bucket home, and when the frost came back he climbed up once more with a flask of tea and a pencil, and drew the lion the way a man draws a thing he means to keep. He numbered each spike as he went. The pencil stopped at the forty-first, and he left the last place on the page bare, the way the mason had left one stroke uncut, and walked down the hill with the frost biting at his ears.