Pencil drawing of a realistic lion head with a full mane, set above a cluster of lilies, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Realistic lion head with lilies

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pencil drawing of a lion's head facing the viewer, with a full mane and intense eyes. Below the lion, a cluster of outlined lilies with soft shading sits across the lower edge of the image. The work is entirely in grey pencil tones with a plain pale background.

Realism Botanical Lion Lily Flower Mane Big cat

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You mend nets on the quay at Skerrow because your father's hands have gone stiff, and because the lion on the bow of the Ellen Vosper has watched you since you were a girl. Tobias painted that face himself, with a brush he kept for nothing else. He gave the beast pale, unimpressed eyes that follow you along the slipway, as if the whole harbour were a catch not yet landed properly.

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Tuesday the wind swung north-east and the boats went out anyway, the way boats do. You sat on an upturned crate, twine running through your fingers, and watched the grey water past the breakwater. Someone had tied white lilies from the florist on Fore Street to the wheelhouse rail, and the spray had been working at their stems all afternoon.

They came back at dusk with the paint scraped down one side where the mast had caught the wall, and with four men instead of five. Nobody told you to stop. You kept knotting. When Tobias's grandson climbed up with his cap in his hands, you passed him the needle and said the mesh needed finishing before the tide, because that was the only thing you knew how to say.

In the morning you walked down with a pot of black paint and a fine brush. The lion was still watching the empty place where the fifth man used to stand. You started at the scraped mane and worked slowly, one hair at a time, until the eyes looked back at you again.