Black and grey realism tattoo of two lions' heads side by side with leaves and partial script lettering along the bottom edge, shown on skin.

Two lions with leaves in black and grey realism

Realism · Black and grey · Photo

Two male lions with full manes face the viewer, one turned slightly towards the other, with their eyes rendered in fine shading. Soft gradations and fine stippled texture build up the fur and skin, with leaves framing the left and right edges and cropped lettering along the lower border. The image is shot close up in neutral light, and the piece uses only black ink and greys.

Realism Lion Mane Leaves Lettering Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm has sent you up the scaffold because your hands are steady and your nerve is young, and the lintel over the cloister door wants two heads carved before the bishop's visit. You stand on the planks with the chisel warm in your fist and the whole valley below smelling of wet limestone. The old lion on the left has been waiting four hundred years for someone to finish his mane.

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You have the mason's rule: a face is the last thing you cut, because a face is where a lie shows first. So you work the hair in long strokes, lock by lock, and when you reach the right-hand beast you find its mane started by someone else and abandoned, a fistful of curls and then nothing. Anselm says the first carver died of a fever in the wet spring. You do not ask who the second carver was. You only know that the second lion's head is turned, as if something behind the wall has called its name.

Take the rasp to the muzzle of the one who is looking. Leave the lettering along the base half-buried in moss, as the abbot wants it. He once told you that a stone can only keep one secret at a time, and you want the pair of them to keep the same one.

On the last afternoon, the bishop's party comes through the gate and stops beneath the lintel. Nobody speaks. The light lies flat on the carved fur, and for a moment the two lions seem to share one breath. You climb down, wipe your hands on your apron, and tell Anselm the work is done. He nods and says nothing, which from him is praise.