I know, I know, I said Tuesday and Friday and here it is Thusday. I’m still getting used to WordPress, and my work is nothing if not labor intensive. I spent all day yesterday painting hair on a bison. Bison latifrons is the big, long-horned, high-backed species of the North American Pleistocene. It’s a lot of hair, and it doesn’t simply point from the front to the back, so you have to be aware at all times of direction and “flow” and texture. It’ll be posted here in the not-so-distant future, as soon as it’s up in the museum display at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia.

For right now, I’m putting up the last animal “portrait” I did for a private client. I painted this Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) for a friend some 8 years ago. The original is acrylic on canvas, 30 x 36 inches.

Click here for a much more detailed image.

There’s the idealized animal that we see in our mind and memory, and then there’s the real critter. Whenever I first sketch a cat of any genus other than Panthera, I tend to make the head too big in proportion to the body; cheetahs especially so. First drafts also see my Hippo and Weasel legs too long, and my eagle feet too big (except for Harpies and couple others). The trick is to realize it and make the adjustments.

As I was painting this piece I remember wishing I could paint Wyoming as the background. Up until a few thousand years ago, we had cheetah or very cheetah-like cats here in North America. They still reside here in the evolutionary memory of the Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), and in my dreams.