Black ink drawing of a lion face with bold tribal patterns filling the mane, shown as a tattoo design on a tan background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion face with tribal patterned mane

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A front-facing lion's head is drawn in black linework, with the face in the centre and the mane divided into dense, symmetrical tribal-style patterns of swirls, chevrons and banded lines. The image is monochrome black ink on a warm beige or tan background, with the detailed patterning giving the design strong contrast. The composition is centred and fills a roughly round frame, as a stencil or flash sheet would.

Blackwork Lion Mane Tribal pattern Swirl

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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 lion is the first thing you see when you walk into the sports hall, which is the point of the reunion, Pauline says, pressing a paper name badge onto your lapel. Someone has blown the old school crest up to the size of a door and hung it above the trestle tables. Its mane is a stack of swirls and chevrons, drawn in biro by Mr Gill in the fourth year, who had copied it from a book on carved paddles he borrowed from the museum and never returned.

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You were the one who was supposed to paint it. Final day, the summer of ninety-nine, the head boy wanted the mural finished before the skip arrived, and you were the only one with a steady hand and no sense of when to stop. You spent the whole lunch hour on the left half of the mane, then the bell went and somebody else finished the right, badly, and nobody ever admitted who.

A man with a gravy stain on his tie asks whether you still draw. You say no. Across the hall, Pauline is unrolling a cardboard tube onto a table to show the original sketch. On paper the lion's eyes are a little uneven, the left one heavier, as if the pen had hesitated before committing.

You stand under the big lion while the DJ tests the speakers, and find the line you made that summer, a double chevron running down the left flank, still sharp beneath the varnish. You lift your hand and trace it in the air without touching, the way you'd check a wet page for smudges, and the lion keeps its mouth shut as it always did.