Lion Silhouettes: 20 Lions, Lionesses and Cubs with Detailed Mane Heads and a Savanna Sunset

Ten whole lions and ten maned heads make up these lion silhouettes, and the mane is where the drawing goes deepest: long, tapering locks laid down in black and pale, with whiskers and eye detail cut into the face. Up close each design looks more like an engraving than a flat shadow. A fine outline version of every drawing comes with it.

The ten full-body lions

Five are adult males. One stands side-on with a dark body behind a heavy mane (01), one walks (02), one runs flat out (03), one lies down with the head raised (04) and one sits upright with the tail curled round its feet (05). The females and young are drawn lighter, mostly pale with fine lines and only a few dark patches: a lioness walking (06), a cub sitting with big paws (07), and a lioness standing tall with her cub pressed against her legs (08). The two scenes put a male against the sky, walking in front of a setting sun cut into horizontal bands (09) or lying under a crescent moon (10).

Ten heads, ten manes

The heads cover most of the ways a lion gets drawn. Designs 11 and 15 face you inside a full, round mane, 14 has a long mane that narrows to a point below the chin, and 13 turns three-quarters with the mane blown sideways. The profiles are a roar with the jaws wide open (16) and a calm side view (17). Design 12 swaps the hair for angular shards around a realistic face, 18 sets a head inside a thin circle, 19 is drawn in lines only with no black fill, and 20 adds a fan of short rays above the mane.

Blackwork and the outline

The solid version is not a filled shape. Black and pale share the drawing, which is why the lioness and cub come out light and the heads come out dark. The outline turns every edge of that drawing into a narrow ribbon, so it keeps all the mane locks and facial lines and reads as a busy, fine line drawing. Design 19’s outline traces both sides of each of its lines. Several designs carry loose pieces, like the rays in 20, the moon in 10 and the shards in 12, and the start-here notes say small details and separate parts may need adjusting for your material and tools. Test your settings on a sample first.

Print sizes and where the files sit

On a full US Letter page the standing lion prints about 6.3 inches wide, and a front-facing head about 6.3 inches tall. The four- and six-per-page sheets repeat a single design, at about 3.1 and 2.6 inches across. In the SVG and DXF files the art reaches about 8.6 inches on a 10-inch canvas. The download arrives sorted by format into a print folder, a PNG folder and a vector folder, and the first line of the START-HERE.txt in each one says what that folder holds.

Questions

Which designs show a lioness or a cub?

Design 06 is a lioness on her own, 07 is a sitting cub and 08 is a lioness standing with a cub against her front legs. The other seventeen designs, including all ten heads, are maned male lions.

Does the geometric mane stay in one piece?

No. In design 12 the mane is made of angular shards, and in the solid file about a hundred of them are separate from the face. That suits printing or a large paper piece. For cutting, keep the group together and plan how you will place the loose shards.