Black ink drawing of a snarling lion head with flowing, ornate mane linework and a single drop hanging from its mouth, shown as a tattoo design on white paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head in black ink line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A lion's head turned to the right, with its mouth open to show fangs and a single liquid drop hanging below. The mane and face are built from sweeping, tapering strokes, dense hatching and fine curled detail, with solid black areas creating contrast. The image is monochrome on a plain white background and fills the frame.

Lion Mane Fangs Drop Big cat

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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

Sit closer, the lot of you, and mind the cold stone, for the wind comes up through these ruins like it has a grudge. Eleven winters back, when the keep at Harrowmere still had its roof, a stonemason's boy named Tobias Quill was sent up the north tower to chisel a new lintel. He found the old lion carved above the postern gate, worn to a smudge by rain. Hungry rain, the village says, and it isn't wrong.

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He spent a month on that lion, the boy did, scraping away the moss and the grey crust until the beast came back to himself. Mane first, rolling and curling like a tide that had learned to hold still. Then the great jaw, opened in a roar that never quite arrived. Every evening he'd climb down with his knuckles bleeding and tell old Mistress Adair the thing was nearly finished, and every evening the lion looked back at him as if it knew a secret about the mason's own tongue.

On the last night he set the final tooth and a single drop of stone at the corner of the jaw, the way the masters did to let the beast weep. Then he heard the bell of the lower gate ring out, twice, which meant the duke's men were coming and nobody was to answer it. He hid in the lion's carved mouth, if you can credit it, and waited until dawn. When he crept out the keep was empty and cold, and the drop of stone had a clean wet line running from it down the wall.

They say he's still up there, the mason's boy, polishing that lion's fangs. And if you climb the north tower at dusk and look at its face, you'll find the drop hanging a little lower than it did the day before.