Neo-traditional flash drawing of a cartoon lion cub surrounded by pink blossom, green leaves and a dotted border, drawn on white paper.

Cartoon lion cub with pink blossom

Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash

A coloured drawing of a cartoon lion cub sitting among pink blossom flowers, green leaves and falling petals. The cub and flowers have bold dark outlines with soft orange and pink shading, and dotted and ringed lines form a loose border beneath the composition. The design is centred on white paper against a dark background.

Neo-trad Dotwork Lion cub Lion Blossom Flower Leaf Petal

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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

You find the drawing folded inside a library book about Africa, the one about lions that nobody ever borrows. The paper smells of coal dust and carbolic soap. Someone has drawn a lion cub sitting up among pink blossom, its tail curled like a question mark, and the petals fall round its head as if it has just sneezed them off. Your dad's shift finishes at two, and until then you have to decide whether this belongs to anyone.

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The village is called Hollin Pit because the pit is still there, a headframe standing over the back fields long after the coal left. Nobody on Church Row remembers anyone drawing anything fancy. Mrs Renwick at the post office says the paper came from the Welfare, where her husband used to paint the club's signs. She tells you to take it to the allotments, because the only people who draw flowers in Hollin are the ones who grow them.

At the allotments you find Jack Tulley on his knees beside a row of leeks, his hands black to the wrist. He looks at the cub for a long time. Then he says the lion was his daughter's, drawn the summer before she went south to train as a nurse, and that she always put blossom round things she was afraid of losing. He asks you to keep it, because he cannot bear it in the house and cannot bear to burn it.

You walk home along the tip road with the drawing rolled under your arm. The cherry trees along the old railway have come out early, pink against the grey slag, and a few petals drift onto the paper as you go. You do not put it in a book. You pin it to the inside of your wardrobe door, where the lion can keep watch over the black hills while the blossom goes on falling.