Outline tattoo of two cartoon lion cubes with soft purple and orange splashes behind them, shown on skin.

Two cartoon lion cubes with purple splashes

Other · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows two cartoon lion cubes side by side, one looking towards the viewer and one turned to the left, with a paw raised in the foreground. The bold black outlines are mostly unfilled, with the lions left in skin tone, while the background has sweeping purple, lilac and orange washes and a dark brown shape beneath the paws. The composition is centred and the image is a close, straight-on photograph.

Other Lion Cartoon Splash Paw

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, the tide's not turning for an hour yet, and you'll want to hear this before the gulls get the last of the chips. I've told this on the quay for forty years and not once has a child walked away unhappy, so keep your hands out of your pockets and your questions for after.

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Up the coast there was a lioness called Mrs Oriel Thrane who kept a laundry above the fish market, and she had twin cubs, Pip and Bramwell, as alike as two stones off the same beach and twice as stubborn. Bramwell was the bold one. He'd climb the ferry's rigging before anyone could stop him, and he'd stand on the harbour wall with one paw lifted, daring the spray to come over. Pip only watched, tail flicking, and worked out how every knot in the nets was tied.

One grey morning the wind got into the sails of the lobster boats and the whole harbour went the colour of a bruise. Bramwell was out on the wall again, paw up, shouting at the sea. The wave took him clean off his feet. Pip didn't stop to think. She simply leapt, and the two of them went under among the bladderwrack and came up laughing, spitting salt, the water around them lit lilac and gold by the last of the sunset.

That is why the lions on the harbour wall are left unpainted, just their bold outlines and their watching eyes, while the sea around them is allowed every colour there is. Off you go now. The tide's turned, and your mothers will be wanting you.