Tribal lion head design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A stylised lion head in profile, drawn in solid black ink on cream paper, with an open mouth and a sweeping mane made of tapering curved shapes. The design uses bold, thick-to-thin linework and areas of solid black with no shading or greys. It is a flat, centred composition with plenty of empty space around the motif.

Blackwork Lion Lion head Mane Tribal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lion came to the fairground at Coldharbour the week the river froze, and nobody could say who had brought him. He was not in any cage. He was painted on the side of the big top, a head in profile with its jaw open and its mane swept back like smoke off a wet fire, and the showman Abel Greave swore he had found the canvas rolled up in a hay wagon he had never owned.

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The children loved him. They ran their fingers along the black edges of the painted mane and came away with ink on their hands. The strongman Tobiah Pell did not love him. He said a lion on canvas was a lie told with too much confidence, and he took a knife to the mouth one night to cut the grin off it. In the morning the canvas was whole, but the jaw hung a little lower than before, as though something inside had been laughing.

Tobiah walked out onto the frozen meadow alone that afternoon and did not come back for supper. Abel found his boots set neatly side by side outside the wagon, and a line of prints in the frost leading toward the big top and stopping at the painted flank, as if they had gone in.

The fair packed up in March and moved on to the coast. Nobody took the tent down. It stands there still, the canvas gone grey, and on still mornings the lion's open mouth catches the first light, and the children say it is hungry for the next stubborn man who won't believe in it.