Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head in profile with flowing mane

Black and grey · Flash

A lion's head faces left in profile, with closed eyes, a broad nose and a stippled muzzle and cheek. The mane is drawn with long, flowing lines, curled tufts and bold dark shadow strokes that give it depth. The design is in black ink on a plain white background, with the subject filling most of the frame.

Lion Lion head Mane Profile

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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 old weaver of Harrowmere had a daughter who could not sleep unless the bells were rung backwards, so the bell-ringer kept a ladder by the tower for her. On the morning of the wedding the river came up brown and fast, and the bridge to the chapel at Coldharbour was under water to the second plank. The groom's party stood on the near bank in their good boots, shouting across the flood, while the bride's mother stood in the doorway with her arms folded and said nothing at all.

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It was the lion that solved it, though nobody thanked the lion. Years before, a travelling carver had left a wooden lion's head in the mill yard as payment for a night's lodging, and it had been nailed above the sluice gate ever since, its mane furred with lichen and its eyes shut as if it were dreaming of dry weather. The miller's boy went to fetch it down with a crowbar. Halfway up the ladder he stopped, because the lion had turned its head, just slightly, towards the water, and the carving's long mane had caught the wind and lifted like a flag.

They laid the carved head across the gap between the two posts of the footbridge, mane side up, and the bride walked over it with her skirts held high and her shoes in her hand. The river hissed beneath her and the lion held. When she reached the far bank the miller's boy took the crowbar and levered the head free again, and sent it spinning down into the brown water.

The bride, when she was asked years later whether she had been frightened, said she had only minded that the lion looked so pleased with itself.