Pencil sketch of a winged lion rearing on its hind legs, with a mane, open jaws and feathered wings, drawn in black and grey shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged lion pencil sketch

Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pencil drawing of a lion with feathered wings, standing upright on its hind legs with one forepaw raised. The linework is loose and sketchy in the mane and wings and softer in the body, with graded graphite shading. The figure sits centred on a plain pale background in black and grey.

Lion Wing Mane

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lion on the gatepost at Hollin Lane had been rearing for ninety years before anybody thought to ask what it was reaching for. Its right forepaw was lifted as though someone had called its name across the playground, and its wings spread wide enough to shade the bike sheds at noon.

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Every autumn the old pupils came back for the reunion and stood under it with paper cups of sherry, arguing about the wings. Mrs Adair said they had once been folded, by a man who sold his soul for a church clock. Her brother said that was rubbish and the council had painted over the feathers in 1962, which was why they peeled in the rain.

Nobody believed the clock story until Tom Parry came back from Canada with a pencil and a roll of tracing paper. He pinned the paper to the gatepost in the wet, drew the left wing feather by feather, and found a gap near the tip where one should have been. He noticed the stone under his palm was warm, though it had rained all morning. Someone in the crowd laughed and said he was getting soft in the head.

The next year Tom didn't come. His tracing was pinned under the glass of the staff room, and somebody had added a single feather in pencil, very light, as if it might be wiped away. When the bell rang that afternoon, the lion's raised paw had dropped the width of a finger, and the children running for the gate swore the wings had lifted too.