Black tribal-style lion head design facing left with a flowing mane, drawn as bold line art on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal lion head design in profile

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A stylised lion head in profile faces left, with its mouth, brow and eye outlined in tapering black strokes. The mane sweeps back in curved, flame-like bands that end in sharp points and a hooked tip. The design is rendered in solid black line and fill on a plain white background with no shading or colour.

Blackwork Lion Big cat Mane Tribal

Find an artist for this

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

Sit closer, the lot of you, and mind the wet on the step, because the sea here has never once minded us. My grandmother told me this one and swore on the bread knife that it was true. The lion that lived on the headland above Skerra was no cat from a biscuit tin. He had a face like a shut door and a mane that burned, not red, but black as tar and flickering at the edges like a lamp turned low.

Keep reading

Every October the fishermen rowed out past the reef to bring the nets in, and every October one boat came home short. Old Tam Harrow, who kept the lighthouse before the automatic one came, said the lion took a man's shadow in exchange for a safe return. He said it flatly, with his pipe clamped in his teeth, the way you'd mention the tide turning. Nobody believed him until his own nephew rowed out alone one spring, laughing, to prove it was nonsense.

The nephew came back at dawn with his oars intact and his hands clean, and that was the strange part. He would not say what he had seen. He only pointed up at the headland, where the weather had carved a mane into the rock, sharp points sweeping back toward the water, and the hooked tip at the end turned to face the boat slip, as if still waiting for a hook to take. And that is why, when you go out past the reef, you row with your face to the shore, and you never, ever, whistle at the sea.