The Nameless Cheetah - 2/27/08

I bought this cute stuffed animal at the Vienna Zoo. I like how his spots came out noncircular, and instead are more realistic looking. I'm happy with his muzzle even though the brown shading is a bit drastic and his head is a bit messed up. His right (the closest one) ear gave me incredible difficulty. Do you see the white that outlines the black on the left? That's not supposed to be there. That resulted from be drawing and redrawing his ear over and over in pen. I'm trying to not be as obsessive about perfect positioning and proportion, which is why I started in pen. Pen is permanent; I will not be obsessively erasing over and over in order to get the perfect line. I need to have better results on the first try, and look for the whole general shape rather than get nitpicky, and pen is the perfect medium to force me to do this. When I want to do a more serious drawing/painting, the kind that takes you more than an hour, I will sketch it out in pencil first.

His right front paw appears to be incredibly big and out of proportion. The problem was that it was laying on it's side, and what needed to be drawn was the entire bottom, where the other paws got a bit obscured by the surface they were resting on. It's actually the right size, it just doesn't look like it. It's a bit like drawing a person's hands in front of their face; they always look very large.

Materials
moleskine sketchbook
Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils