Black and grey ornamental drawing of a roaring lion head with a mane of stylised patterns and eyes, in a blackwork and dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental lion head in black and grey

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A roaring lion head faces right, drawn in fine black linework with stippled shading on the muzzle and cheek. The mane is filled with bold swirling stripes, leaf-like shapes and small eye motifs. The design is rendered in black and grey tones on a plain white background.

Blackwork Dotwork Lion Lion head Mane Eye Ornamental pattern Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, The mane is finished at last, and Mr Varga has stopped pacing the workshop. Forty-one leaves cut from black oilcloth, each one striped with the wavy black and white he insisted on, and every leaf needed an eye. I stitched the eyes from glass beads and the odd brass boss off Mother's old travelling trunk, because the cloth shop in Sheffield had none that matched. He says a lion that cannot be watched is no lion at all.

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The head came from a block of lime wood that split in the damp the first week, so Varga pieced the muzzle back together and painted the stipple onto it with a cat's-hair brush, dot by dot, the way you would count rain. The teeth are bone, real bone from the butcher on Fargate, and he would not let me touch the fangs. The cheek ridges he built up with glue and sand until the whole face looked ready to roar at the back row.

Fridays at the Palais the lads go mad for it. Last week a sailor in the third row swore the eyes in the mane moved when the lights swung round. I told him it was the brass catching the lamps, which is true, mostly.

Tonight I am sewing the last lining in at the back. When the thread runs out I will sit in the wings and watch the hall through the gaps in the mane, the way the lion does. Varga says that is the whole trick: a thing with a thousand eyes never has to look any one of you in the face. Come and see it before the Whitsun dances, and bring the good scissors.