Black ink line drawing of a lion head with a flowing mane, set in a crescent moon and beside a rosary and cross, drawn on paper as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head with crescent moon and rosary

Black and grey · Flash

A detailed ink drawing on paper of a lion's head in three-quarter view, with a flowing, curled mane and a jewelled ornament on its brow. A dotted crescent moon with a starry night panel sits behind the head, and a beaded rosary with a cross hangs down the right side. The fine, even linework is in black on a plain off-white sheet, with no shading or colour.

Lion Lion head Mane Crescent moon Rosary Cross Star Dot

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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

Dennis Hale kept touching the beads in his jacket pocket through every speech, as if they might slip out and roll under the trestle tables. The Lansdown Road Infants had been shut for eleven years, and the hall still smelt of the same floor polish Mrs Carrick used for the Christmas play. Ruth watched him turn the beads between finger and thumb while Councillor Mott talked about the new library.

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They had been nine when the lion went missing. Mr Okafor's painted lion hung above the stage every term, with a crescent moon behind it, dotted in silver paint like the sky over the playground. Year Six copied it onto every exercise book. Then one February morning the hook was bare, and the only thing left was a length of string knotted to a cross, snagged on the pulley.

After the sponge cake, Ruth asked him where he had put it. He said his nan had made him promise to keep it safe until somebody asked the right question. He unfolded a sheet of thin paper from his wallet: the lion's head in fine black ink, its mane curling like breaking surf, the moon behind it and the beads running down one side. Ruth knew the careful hand that had drawn those curls, the same hand that had once been told off for pressing too hard.

"You drew it," he said. "So we'd know it wasn't stolen. It was only lent."

She folded the paper along its old creases and slid it back into his pocket, beside the beads. "Then you'd better keep it till the next one," she said. Outside, the car park lamps came on one by one, and somewhere behind the stage a caretaker was still polishing the floor.