Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head sketch on paper

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil and ink sketch shows a lion's head turned to the right, with a dense, flowing mane drawn in layered, angular strokes. The fur is suggested with hatching and broken outlines, while the muzzle and nose are defined by firmer lines and dots. The monochrome brown linework sits on cream paper, with a green pencil lying across the top right corner.

Lion Lion head Mane Sketch Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm caught me drawing a lion in the margin of the psalter again, and instead of taking the quill away he pulled a sheet of cheap paper from the press and set it in front of me. 'Draw him properly,' he said, 'the way you would if the abbot were not watching.' I had been sent to copy the Gospels, not to dream about beasts.

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So I drew the lion with the green pencil the cellarer used for the wine ledgers, a stub that smelled of resin and dust. I started with the mane because it frightened me most. It came off the page in angry tongues, each lock broken by a hatch of short strokes, so the eye could not settle and the whole head seemed to be shaking itself free of the paper. The muzzle I left until last. Three firm lines for the bridge of the nose, a single dark crescent for the nostril, and the whiskers as a row of dots like rain on a dirty window.

When I showed him, Anselm held the sheet up to the candle and said nothing for so long that the wax dripped onto his sleeve. 'It is not the lion of Judah,' he said at last. 'It is a lion that has been locked in the cellar all winter and has just smelled the bread.' I wanted to tell him that was exactly the point, but he was already folding the sheet into his habit. The next morning the abbot found a drawing pinned above the refectory door, and nobody would say who had put it there.