This drawing is of a snow leopard girl named Tashi from Paul Dini's comic series Jingle Belle. Weekly strips of this comic can be seen at the Wicked Cool Stuff! website. Tashi is a very interesting and surprisingly catlike character. Jingle Belle, which centers around the mis-adventures of Santa Claus's rebel punk daughter, is an interesting place to find a cat woman character. She met Santa's daughter by competing against her in the "All Artic Winter Games." Tashi and Jingle Belle are both competitive athletes and were part of the Tibet and North Pole athletic teams, respectively. At first they were on good terms until they found out they were at an equal footing in many of the events. Then they each tried to eliminate the other by hitting her leg with a metal pipe- Tanya Harding style! Now Tashi is Jingle Belle's "friendly adversary."
Tashi is very catlike in her personality and movement. Throughout the comic book all she does is lounge around on a bed or on the carpet in different positions, just like any lazy house cat. She has her athletic side too, but it seems that just like a house cat she lies around 20 hours a day and is truly active only 4. She has a powerful ego and will not hesitate to start a "catfight" with Jingle.
Tashi was one of my quicker drawings- I got her done in only about 6 hours. The smooth, simple, and elegant drawing style of Steve Rolston contributed to much of that, as well as the relatively simple color scheme I chose for her. A special note on the coloring scheme- I have seen some conflicting character designs and colors for Tashi because she has been rendered by several different artists. Like with Capcom's Felicia charcter there seems to be no "official" version of Tashi that I could find. As a result I drew her most resembling the Steve Rolston version and chose her colors by mixing the best qualities of two completely different colored versions from different artists. The colors I chose I felt were most suiting for Steve Rolston's black and white comic character.
I used a photo backgound with this drawing, and Microsoft Windows Millenium Edition users will recognize it from one of their desktop wallpaper selections. I do not have Windows ME, (Go Windows 3.11 and Windows 98 SE!) so I ended up copying this wallpaper from a friend's PC. I just fealt the iceberg was so stunning and thought it fit the character because she is both part snow leopard and lives in an ice cave. This is sort of a "Christmasy" character and I got it done in time for the holidays, so I hope you all enjoy it.
The rough pencil work was done on 80lb. medium surface Strathmore drawing paper with a .05mm mechanical pencil loaded with 5H lead. The pencil lines were darkened with 2B lead. The result was darkened and cleaned up with Paint Shop Pro 3.11 and printed on fax/copy paper. The printout was colored with Crayola colored pencils and the inking was done with a Pigma Micron 03 size pen. The lettering, lighting effects, and background were 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.