Black and grey blackwork lion tattoo with a roaring face, flowing mane and mandala ornament, shown on the forearm in two views.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Roaring lion with mandala ornament on forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A roaring lion's head with bared teeth, a full flowing mane and a mandala-style ornament above and behind it, shown from two angles side by side. The work uses fine engraved-looking linework with dense hatching and stippled shading to build the fur, nose and facial planes. The composition is tightly framed on the forearm against a dark background, with the mane continuing down the arm.

Blackwork Realism Forearm Lion Mane Mandala Ornament Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the mooring rope, you lot, and sit where the boards don't sing. Right. You want the lion of Cutter's Reach, then you'll have to hear about Mab Hollis, who ran the Corinna with her brother and a cargo of circus leftovers. Forty years back, that was. The menagerie had gone bust at Stourport and the lion came aboard instead of the knacker's cart, because Mab would not see a beast put down for want of a stable.

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He was called Sultan and he never once looked at the water. He sat in the stern hold on a bed of straw and stared at the lamp hung from the beam, as if the flame owed him money. At night, when the locks were quiet, he would open that mouth wide and roar until the sluice gates shivered and the herons lifted off the reeds. Her brother swore the whole of Worcester could hear him. Mab only laughed and laid a hand flat on the planks, the way you'd settle a nervous horse.

The ring of petals came from a tin trunk she bought off a brass pedlar in Gloucester, its lid stamped with circles and tiny crowns. She scratched the pattern into the hatch above his head with a nail, one circle at a time, so the lamplight caught every line. Sultan stopped roaring that winter. Some say he had finally had his say. I say he was only watching his own shadow in the carved light, deciding whether it was worth the trouble. Now mind your heads on the way off, the gangplank's gone soft.