Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate lion in profile

Mixed · Flash

A lion faces right in profile, drawn with dense black linework that builds the mane from flowing strands and geometric panels. The face and head carry fine hatching and ornamental patterning in warm rust tones. The pale peach background leaves the animal isolated, with the mane filling the left side of the composition.

Lion Mane Big cat Profile Ornament Pattern Linework

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the lion came off the cart at ten past four, and Mrs Pryce wants it on the gatepost by Saturday or she will have Gwyn Ellis set it in plain concrete, which I told her I would not stand for. You know the one I mean, the old carved beast from the Lavender Hall sale, mane scrolled and chevroned like a Sunday hat. Nobody in Llanwen has seen its like.

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I spent the afternoon on my knees with a wire brush and a jar of linseed. Under the grime the rust colour came up, warm as a fox's coat, and every strand of the mane had a fine groove cut into it by someone with more patience than pay. The panels along the shoulders are geometric, diamonds and bent arrows, and I counted eleven ways the carver turned a single chevron. I don't think he was careless in the least. I think he was showing off to the lion.

Dad would have laughed at me. He always said a thing was finished when the weather stopped mattering to it, and this one has weathered sixty years in a yard full of rhubarb. I will not finish it by Saturday. Mrs Pryce can wait, or she can hire somebody who thinks a mane is just a lot of hair.

Come home in June and bring your good pencils. The lion faces the road, and I want you to tell me whether he looks like he is leaving or arriving. Yours, Nell.