Black and grey line drawing of a lion head with an ornate mandala-style mane and patterned face, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Ornamental lion head line drawing

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A front-facing lion head drawn in fine black linework, with its mane built from layered pointed feathers and dense decorative patterns. The face is filled with swirls, scrolls and intricate ornamental detail, with shading in the mane and a symmetrical composition on a plain white background.

Geometric Lion Mane Mandala Ornament Pattern Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The harbour master wanted his lion finished before the Whitsun regatta, and he wanted it symmetrical, because the Ferrier brothers had argued about the old one for forty years and he was tired of being asked which side was the true face. I told him a lion has no true side. He paid me in advance anyway, in coins still warm from his coat.

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I cut the mane first, the way my father taught me, one pointed feather at a time, each one shallower than the last so the stone seemed to lift at the tips. The face took longer. Scrolls on the brow, spirals along the muzzle, a lattice of tiny stops that Mrs Oram said looked like her grandmother's lace. I did not argue with her. Ornament is only patience that has been written down.

On the last evening the tide came in under the quay and I went out with my lamp to check the joins. The lion faced the water, his eyes cut deep enough to catch the light, and I saw that the ring of pattern behind his mane had become a ring of boats seen from above, each mast a spoke. Someone had once told me the design repeated because the fishermen always came home to the same place. I had not understood it until the stone showed me.

In the morning the regatta boats went out past the gate and the harbour master stood beneath the lion with his hat in his hands. He ran a thumb along one feather and said nothing for a long time. Then he asked whether I could cut the other half of the mane, the half facing the village, so the lion could watch both ways. I said I would need another winter. He said he had one to spare.