I was looking through nature photograph archive websites one day when I came across this adorable photograph of a cheetah sitting on a (termite?) mound with it's ears cocked back and it's fur being blown in the wind. The second I saw this fuzzy critter I said, "You are such an adorable little bugger!" So I saved the photo to my hard drive and promised myself that I would draw this cute big kitty cat someday. That "someday" has finally come!
I usually don't draw many photorealistic images and often hesitate to do so. They usually only take a little bit longer than my normal drawings, so time is not the issue. The issue is that I am trying to make an exact duplicate of a living creature in a different medium freehand. It's not easy, and impossible for me to get it perfect, so I always worry that people are going to look down upon all of my mistakes. Luckily, almost all the responses I get are positive and I keep right on making them.
Overall, I am very satisfied with how this drawing turned out. I spent a couple hours on just the light pencil work, trying to get it right. The pencil darkening, the cleanup and shadowing, the coloring and inking, and the final cleanup was completed in just one Friday afternoon and night. Overall this drawing probably took about 8 hours to complete. I have included the photograph that I took this cheetah from so that you can compare my work to the original. I did my best, and I hope you all enjoy the results!
This drawing was done on 80lb. medium surface Strathmore drawing paper. For the rough pencil work I used a .05mm mechanical pencil with 5H lead. I used 2HB lead for line darkening. The result was cleaned up and darkened with Paint Shop Pro 3.11. The print out was on standard Georgia-Pacific fax/copy paper and was colored with Crayola colored pencils. The inking was done with an 05 Pigma Micron pen and an 08 Zig Millennium pen. The lettering was done with Paint Shop Pro 7.02.
All text and original multimedia is © 2001 Daniel Keller. All other information is copyrighted by their respective owners.