Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a lion face with a mandala-style petal backdrop and fringed drapery below, shown on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion face within a mandala design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's face is shown front on, with a detailed mane, whiskers and a pronounced nose, set within a symmetrical mandala of layered petals. Fine stippled dots and single lines build the shading and ornament, with dotted tassel-like drops hanging from the lower edge. The design is rendered entirely in black and grey ink against a pale, plain background, centred in the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Lion Mandala Petal Mane Whiskers Dot Tassel

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down by the stove and mind the coal, it spits like a cat. You want to hear about the lion on the cabin door? Everybody wants the lion. Old Hal Brindle painted him the winter his wife walked off to her sister's in Stourport and didn't write for a month. Hal had a tin of lamp black, a bag of brushes and a boat that wasn't going anywhere, so he set to.

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He didn't paint the lion the way the other boats do, all roses and castles and red-and-gold nonsense. He drew him front on, staring straight out at the towpath, with his mane hanging down like weed in the current. Round his head he put petals, layer on layer, like the cabbage roses on the enamel can, only he made them stranger. He stippled every dot with the blunt end of a darning needle, two hours some evenings, and when his fingers cramped he'd drink his tea cold and carry on. The eyes he left half shut, because he said a lion who's watching a canal all day gets tired of it.

Nell Ashby, the lock keeper's girl, came by most mornings with a flask of cocoa she said was for the cold and not for him. She stood on the gunwale and looked at the lion a long while. Then she said he looked like he was listening. Hal asked what he was listening to. She said to the bargees lying about their cargo and to the locks sighing when they filled. Hal didn't say anything. He just put in the drops hanging off the bottom of the design, one for every day she'd been gone, and then he stopped counting because the drops had started to look like rain.

That was the spring Nell came back up the towpath with her boots full of mud. She put her sleeve against the door and wiped a smear off the lion's nose. Hal told her it was only lamp black. She said, aye, I know, and went inside to put the kettle on.