Black and grey ornamental drawing of a roaring lion head with a swirling, scrolled mane, shown as a tattoo design on a white background.

Ornamental lion head design

Black and grey · Flash

A lion's head with open jaws and bared fangs is built from flowing scrolls, curls and dotted details that form its mane. The linework is bold black with white negative space, and areas of fine diagonal hatching add shading across the mane. The design is shown in greys on a plain white background, with the head filling a tall, centred composition.

Lion Lion head Mane Swirl Scroll Fangs Ornament

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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 marquee smells of cut grass and the urn's stewed tea, and the florist has asked you twice where the lion should go. You have been painting scrollwork on the lychgate of St Aldhelm's since six, your brush loaded with black gouache, while the bride's uncle leans over your ladder and insists the mane looks like a cabbage. You tell him lions have cabbages on their heads and go back to the curls.

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The commission came from Marguerite Vane, who wanted her late father's crest on the gate: a lion with its jaws open and fangs bared, as if roaring at the vicar. You drew it three times. Each time the mane came out as curls, then ribbons, then spirals that refused to stop. Your mother once told you a mane is only a great many small decisions made quickly, so you stop deciding and let the dots fall where they like, like seeds blown into a hedge.

By noon the rain has passed. The groom's brother finds you on the bottom step and asks whether the lion is meant to look hungry. You say it is meant to look like it is guarding something it loves. He laughs, then goes quiet, and holds the ladder steady while you hatch the shadow under the jaw with fine diagonal strokes, the way you would shade a sky before weather.

When the bell rings you are already packing the brushes. Nobody looks up at the gate, which tells you it is right. Last, you sign the underside of the top scroll with a single dot, then walk out past the confetti and the cabbage-minded uncle, leaving the lion behind you to keep watch over the couple's first step into the lane.