Black and grey ornamental drawing of a lynx face with intricate patterned fur, detailed eyes and geometric motifs on the forehead, shown as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental lynx face illustration

Black and grey · Flash

A stylised lynx face faces forward, with large detailed eyes, tufted ears and a nose framed by geometric markings. The fur and ornament are built from fine hatching, stippling and dense linework, with shading that gives the eyes and muzzle depth. The palette is almost entirely greys and black on a pale textured background, with a few small pale blue accents near the forehead and nose.

Cat Face Eye Ornament Pattern Whiskers

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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

At ten to midnight the exchange at Harrowdene was quiet enough that Ada Pell could hear the moths knocking at the back-room window. She had the night shift on her own since Mr Gurney's chest gave out, and she had come to like the company of the lynx pinned above the jacks. Nobody remembered who had put the print there. It was grey and black, a face built from hatching and tiny stars, with eyes like two wet pebbles under a lamp, and in the dark it seemed to watch the plugs more closely than she did.

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On the Thursday the storm came off the moor and took the line to Carrow Mill. Every board lit at once in a rash of red, and the operator at Carrow was shouting down a dead wire. Ada ran her finger over the pattern on the print: the diamond at the brow, the lattice across the cheek, the pale blue flicker where the ink had been thinned almost to nothing. She had been told never to route by guesswork. But the lynx had its own geometry, and the old mill cable ran the same way the lines on its nose did, a zig, a loop, a zig.

She pulled four jacks, crossed two leads, and a voice came through thin and startled. "Who is this?" "Harrowdene exchange," Ada said. "You're through. Mind the step, Mr Dunn, the mill's still standing." A small laugh, then the steady hum of a working line.

When the rain eased she took a pencil and copied the lynx onto the back of a telegram form, line by line, the way Mr Gurney had taught her to copy a circuit. The copy came out smudged and wrong wherever the original was clever. She pinned it beside the print anyway, and the next night, when the lamps went red again, she already knew which lead to reach for.