Black linework tattoo of a lion head with a flowing mane across the upper back and shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's head in profile with an open mouth and a long, flowing mane drawn in black outline. The face has heavier dark shading and patterned sections, while the mane is rendered with thin, sweeping lines that fan out toward the lower edge. The tattoo sits on bare skin against a plain, slightly blurred background.

Back Shoulder Lion Lion head Mane

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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 crate sat between the flour sacks and the spare tyre, and Vesna Halaszova had already told the customs man it held cheese. Beyond the wire the river ran brown under the bridge, and the guard at the barrier was counting cigarette packets in a tin with the patience of a man who had nothing better to count.

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The lion had come off the gatepost of Ostrel Manor the spring the orchard flooded. Her grandfather had cut its mane from a single block of limestone, and the sweeping grooves that fanned toward the base were so fine that rain filled them and dried them into pale threads. The face was another matter. Heavy chisel work had gone into the brow and cheeks, patterned like the bark of a burnt oak, so that from a distance the beast looked furious and up close it looked tired.

"Open it," the guard said. She did, and the lamp caught the jaw, mouth wide, the stone teeth still sharp at the edges. He stared for a long moment, then waved her on. She drove the last kilometre with the window down, not because she wanted air but because she half expected to hear the lion breathing through the gap in the crate, which of course it did not.

At the bend above the village she stopped the van and climbed into the back. She set the stone on the old gatepost stump, where the iron pins still waited for it, and turned it until its open mouth faced the water. Somewhere below, a dog barked twice. She sat on the tailgate and waited for the light to change, as if the lion might have something to say about the crossing.