Black line drawing of a lion head framed by feathers, a geometric mandala and dotwork patterns, shown as a tattoo design on white.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion head with mandala and feather design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed black line drawing of a lion's face, facing forward, with its mane formed from feathers and ornamental linework. The lion sits within a large geometric circle of overlapping arcs and a dotted border, with a dreamcatcher-style motif below and a decorative mandala crown above. The work uses fine black linework, stippling and dot patterns on a plain white background, with no colour.

Dotwork Geometric Lion Mandala Feather Dreamcatcher Geometric pattern Ornament 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

The lion had been painted over twice before Ada Penhallow got the commission, and both times the mane had come out looking like a badly swept hearth. The barn smelled of diesel and cut hay. Outside, the marquee poles were going up in the rain, and somebody was shouting about the generator.

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She started with the circle. She knotted a length of string to a nail in the beam, measured the radius with her thumb, and drew the first ring in chalk so the old man could see it. "Bigger," said Walter Crane, who had walked over from the house with his hands in his cardigan pockets. "He's meant to look as if he's been waiting for someone." Ada nodded, though she had no idea what a lion waiting looked like. She chalked the arcs overlapping, six of them, until the wall looked like the inside of a clock.

The feathers came from the bride's aunt, who had carried a dreamcatcher all the way from Saskatchewan in her hand luggage and wanted it hung somewhere useful. Ada copied its web onto the lower third of the wall, a hoop of dots sitting under the lion's chin, and found the hardest part was not the mane but the eyes. Walter watched her do the left one twice. On the third try she gave it a small dark gleam, and the animal seemed to lift its head.

At the reception the lanterns came on at dusk. Someone had tied a single white feather to the string still hanging from the nail, and it turned slowly in the warm air beneath the painted mane. Walter stood under the lion with a glass of cider, saying nothing, and Ada thought he looked like a man who had been told the thing he was waiting for had finally arrived.