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robertsloan2 — Cheetah circa 1990
Published: 2005-09-25 21:34:21 +0000 UTC; Views: 1958; Favourites: 36; Downloads: 73
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4 x 6" oval, Derwent drawing pencils and nonphoto blue Prismacolor on paper, xeroxed.This is all that I have left of the best artwork I did in the 1990s. I had the original matted and framed in a 4 x 6" oval opening mat, a good three layer mat with a lot of fancy cuts, and along with two other framed pictures it was stolen during a move in the early 1990s. I saw them go into the truck. I saw them come out of the truck and get stacked by the curb. When all my stuff got into the apartment they were nowhere to be found. I was so angry, but I never knew who took this or Dinosaur Guernica or a large framed watercolor painting a Chicago friend gave me. But I was so happy to find the xerox I had made of it when I went looking in my portfolio for knotwork pieces that I had to scan the xerox and post it. This drawing was one of those moments of finite perfection, serendipity far beyond what I was doing at the time. It taught me how to get fur and eye textures. I understand more some of the reasons it worked as well as it did now fifteen years later, but this was one of the pieces I showed the poster shop in New Orleans when I sold the first poster.
It meant a lot to me. It was definitely Not For Sale no matter how broke I got, but a thief got it. And now I plan on reconstructing it -- I finally replaced my Derwent drawing pencils too, so I have the full range. My first idea was and is to reconstruct it on illustration board as carefully as possible, as if copying a historical work. But I'm also now tempted to do some variations using the xerox as a sketch. It's too bad the black and white can't convey the eye colors, I managed to get very subtle greens using the nonphoto blue with brown ochre. I'm as proud of this as the morning after I did it.
This piece also represents the longest workday of my life: 48 hours. I went to work at 7am, worked round the clock, worked round the clock again because the shop was in a "crunch" and had been backed up for a week. I just kept going and every hour or so I had about ten minutes to draw when the phototypesetter printed out my work. So I started the cat from a postage-stamp sized reference on a National Wildlife Foundation brochure that I no longer own (or I'd be reconstructing with the reference as a guide too) and finished around the time my boss came in on the second day and dazedly wobbled and told him "Man, I know it's seven in the morning and the day's just starting but you think I could just go home now? I didn't want to leave till you got back here." He was so boggled. He did not expect me to be there. It was trippy. It also led to the biggest weekly paycheck of my life, over $700 even after withholding. So I felt justified in keeping this cat Not For Sale no matter what.
And I'm going to draw him again because I miss him.
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Comments: 85
Thank you! I wish I still had the original, but I framed it and kept it and then it got stolen during a move along with two other framed artworks -- one a gift from a friend, the other a very large coloured pencil painting of dinosaurs. I still miss them all, and that is so frustrating.
I want to redo it sometime with Derwent Drawing Pencils and a Prismacolor Non-Photo Blue the way I did the first time, since I miss it so much!
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WOW! TAHTS IZ AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! u r soooo good! omgomgomg
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Great picture! I love the fur texture. I really love working with fur textures so I know how long it take. The shading is beautiful too.
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Oh yeah. I did this with Derwent Drawing Pencils back when they only came in black, white and four earth tones, plus a nonphoto blue Prismacolor from the print shop I worked at. I miss this drawing so much, it got stolen in a move and I still want to try to reconstruct it someday. Of all the artworks I did and no longer own, I think I might stand a chance with this one.
I also bought an Artograph Lightbox on my last Blick order, the little tiny low end one -- so I might be able to take the old Xerox and lay it on the lightbox to exactly transfer the sketch to good Stonehenge paper -- if I have to redo it to have it in color again, then I'm better off doing it on good 100% rag paper than otherwise. Just get the lines down right and then lay the old black and white copy next to it while coloring it in -- and remember, especially remember what I did exactly with the colors. I know that the eyes were actually green achieved with the Nonphoto Blue and Brown Ochre pencils. I used the blue again in the sky and the rest was all those few earth tones -- reddish, golden, dark brown and darker reddish. It came out in color looking entirely natural.
The fur texture isn't that time consuming compared to, say, covering over the entire area with colored pencil. I work loose on the fur textures and got in the habit of lifting the pencil to finish long before I did this cat -- actually learned that technique on fluffy human hair in portraits. Because the Derwent Drawing Pencils are very soft, as soft as Prismacolors or at least a 6B graphite pencil, I was able to let them blunt to a semi-chisel tip and get broad soft strokes that feathered off easily instead of needing to do many more strokes because the lines were narrower. Thus I got good shading by pressure on this cheetah.
I did it in short breaks over a very long workday on a pad of linen finish paper or something like that, it was just a tablet about 6 x 9" or so and I'd marked off the area of a 5" x 7" oval mat onto it. So it wasn't nearly as lengthy as if I'd worked larger and kept it squared off to rectangle, no major background fill-ins needed except a little sky. Ovals help a lot with head portraits human or feline!
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Great work with the fur and textures...cheetahs are fun to draw! ^_^ This one's lovely
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Thank you. I loved this piece, but it got stolen a decade ago and what I have left is this black and white copy I thankfully made. I'm so glad I just tossed it on the copier the time that I did. I'm going to try to recreate it in the original colored pencils that I used, and I'm still thinking through how to transfer it accurately to get a good copy.
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Wow Robert. Just Wow. This had all the earmarks of a pose from a Geographic (not too far off) and is so perfect, so moving... so sad! Both that you had it stolen, and really, just look into those eyes! I can't stop looking at that face. He's just so beautiful.
I cannot believe the C.S. that stole him from you, and probably for something that means a hell of a lot less. But thievery is one of the sincerest forms of appreciation, no matter how damning to the soul of the taker and maddening to the soul of the taken.
I wish you all the success in recreating that masterwork that you can possibly achieve.
k
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Thanks! I may not use the same paper. I don't actually have the same paper, so I'm considering using the vellum side of tracing paper or tracing film for one version. I don't have the photo reference any more either. But colored pencil on tracing paper has its own spectacular effect, and just gets mounted over white paper to look good.
Or I'll do it more than once and see if I can develop it into a painting or something too. It's not very large and it's still compelling. I know when I do have a new version of it to hang I'll be so glad!
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I love this. You've captured this image beautifully, even the emotion in his eyes.
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Thanks! That's why I have to be so careful trying to redo him -- his eyes were so perfect and in the original they were this subtle blend of colors, bluish reflections on golden-brown-green eyes.
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This is a wonderful work! Amazing depth in both the fur and the eyes. I think I like the eyes the best. They have a far away look like she can see some prey but it's too far away to run after.
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Thank you! Yeah, I was working from a photo reference about the size of a postage stamp and followed it exactly, and I think the cheetah was actually juvenile -- kind of a big teenager. Someone who does know zoology mentioned that once when I had the original. I loved the way the eyes came out. I'm not sure if I can do it again, but I really want to recreate this lost art because I loved the original so much I wasn't willing to sell it.
I've finally gotten the same pencils I had when I did it. The original was done with all six colors of Derwent Drawing Pencils and a Prismacolor Nonphoto Blue on a pad of white paper I had at the time that had a linen texture -- but it wasn't acid free, so I'm not too worried about matching paper texture other than getting one that has a cold press surface with enough tooth the pencils behave on it. This will be my first try at using one of my old drawings as a photo reference, but I don't have the original photo any more either. And I very much want to recreate the look in his eyes because that gave it so much depth in the original, like behind the viewer are miles and miles of Africa.
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If you have or can borrow a light box it would make it easier to remake this drawing. You mention cold press, but you might want to get some hot press and give it a chance. I do all my pencil on hot press, it's great stuff. Good luck in redoing it (something I always hate to do because i"m almost always disapointed, heehee).
Cheers,
L
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I like hot press watercolor paper, but for pencil drawing I like a little tooth to the paper and I know the original had even more texture than cold press. It depends on the paper of course.
I've thought of getting a light box many times, but that gives me an idea for how to improvise it -- at least transfer the sketch lines by tracing this Xerox copy after taping it up to the window in the morning when it's bright. My room gets very bright light in the mornings and that does work, though a light box would let me work over the original for every detail. Hmm. There are small ones on sale... I might consider that actually, just reshuffling what I get on the holiday sale... it'd be useful for that and maybe for a few other things. Once I had it I'd use it and it would not need to be a large one.
Hehehe margarine not real butter next month if I do this, but it could well be worth it in the long run. They had a good one on sale. I checked in the catalog and the Lightracer is only $24.99 for the basic one with a 10 x 12" viewing area. Nothing I draw ever really goes much bigger than 9 x 12" so I don't need a larger tracing area, and it looks nice and compact! I pulled off an extra set of colored pencils to make room for it and kept it within my budget.
I expect to be doing this to my order all month till I get my December check and actually place my order. That's half the fun of the Holiday Sale Catalog. Some of the stuff comes on sale again in other seasonal catalogs, other items get discounted that far only on the holidays, and it's part of the fun trying to push the amount I save off retail to the point it's more than 50% off for the entire order.
And thanks to your suggestion, I may be able to redo my long-lost Freedom Cat! I loved this piece. That was the original title, because I drew the original from a postage stamp sized photo in a World Wildlife Fund brochure during 1990 when I had a huge backlog at work on my typesetting job. I wound up working round the clock two days in a row. I did a 40 hour workday which was one of the great marathon efforts of my life, and I did catch up with the rushed coupon-book order that had to be done in three days on top of the shop's other work when the shop was already backed up.
Sometime around the first evening of the monster marathon 'week's worth of work in one shift' craziness, I got the brochure and my pencilbox out, and what I had on me for colored pencils was the Derwent Drawing Pencils and one Non-Photo Blue Prismacolor that I brought to use on the layout table. So I sketched him and just started slowly filling in details on my sketch. Freedom Cat was a number of firsts. The first time I got fur texture successfully. The first time I got white fur in softly with shadows in a mix of black and blue used lightly with white burnishing over it. The first time I got shadows in right under a cat's chin and three dimensional rounding on a variegated pelt. The first cat face done that accurately. The first cat eyes done that real and glossy yet shadowed by his fur and eyelashes. I loved that drawing.
I refused to sell it despite pressure from my ex "Oh you could make $10 for it at a con" and a lot of round the clock fighting as to why I needed to keep that once in a lifetime drawing more than I needed another $10 when I'd just worked a 40-hour workday. So that gave it even more resonance. And throughout the nights when I worked on it that was how I kept myself awake and kept the loneliness off being alone in the shop and kept the pressure down, reminded myself there was more to me than typing. My mind was off on a savannah watching this young cat stand on a rock or a ridge sniffing the wind and getting ready to run faster than any other living creature.
So it means a lot to me, and now I think I'll be able to do it. It's silly that I never got or used a lightbox before, but I spent many years doing freehand rendering reasonably well. But I interpret and change things when I work from a photo. I improve them. It's part of the process. I don't want to improve this one, it was a moment of finite perfection as it was. I just want to recreate it the way it was, mat it and frame it and hang it again on my wall.
It won't take as long to do it without doing hours of typing between every five or ten minute drawing session but if I succeed the second Freedom Cat will be as wonderful as the first for being able to do that -- reconstruct something long lost and loved. That's its own challenge and thank you so much for recommending the right tool for the job!
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Wow! You write novels when you reply! 10 dollars? 10?! That's insane! A drawing like that (the orgianl) shouldn't sell for less than 300. 10...bah I say, and bah again!
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It's a matter of what market it gets shown at. I was selling art at media fandom conventions. Star Trek characters and Miami Vice characters and a few other shows I was a fan of, I could sell portraits for over $100 easily -- but there wasn't much interest in nature art. I know. I got so shocked at the thought that I wouldn't begin to think of selling it, and then realized even if someone did offer three figures for it I didn't want to let go of it.
And thanks to your suggestion, I may be able to actually succeed in recreating it. That would so rock. If I do I may render it in more than one medium afterward. It'd be cool to do several of them -- transfer just the basic lines to watercolor paper and go for the next step, trying to render it in watercolour. I've never done a good cat in watercolor, not detailed like that. I did a fun rendering of Ari in watercolour for a friend -- it's way back in my Gallery. He was laying down but I didn't give him a background so it came out looking like he was romping on his hind feet preparing to do karate.
But I'd love to try for a painting of a cat that good.
I've done some pastel paintings that came close but did sell those in New Orleans. A couple of them got stolen when a gallery shut down and vanished without notice and without returning the art or paying for it. I'd gotten hold of some velour boards and discovered I could do big cats real big on velour with pastels and still get a lot of detail on them! I'm thinking of doing a few of those again sometime, now that I have velour paper again.
Ahh all the neat projects for next year. I can see where I'm going. I tend to get ideas months and years before doing them but eventually they come out better when I finally get around to doing them. I thought of doing Autumn Morning or something like that when I first moved here to Minneapolis last January, and when I finally did it, I was happy with the result.
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I realised a little while ago that this beautiful drawing that meant so much to you I had forgotten to add to my favourties.
Forgive me in my tardiness 
Thank you ........ 
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Wow, thank you! I finally have the exact pencils I used to do it and illustration board or good acid free paper to do it on. I hope I'll be able to recreate it or do another version using this as reference, because in color it was so incredible. Even in black and white it carries a lot of punch. That was probably some of why it was so great in color, it had good values. Purr so glad you put it on your favorites! Purr.
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I was shocked to realise that I hadn't got it in my favourites. But it is tucked safely there now 
Oh yes. I feel so honoured, humbled and elated that you consider me one of your favourite photographers. A smile wreathed my face when I read your journal but couldn't reply on that as it would seem like I was "rowing my own boat". So many, many thanks Robert and yes I do have one or two photographs waiting hahahahahahaha
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Oooh purr! I'm looking forward to them. Just won't have much time between writing and prewriting and trying to write and staring at a blank file producing bloody beads of sweat on my forehead, agonizing and staring like some gaunt goth angst gone bad writing freak, posing with my hand to my forehead, wallowing for pity under the nightmare unthinkable pressures of writer's block and other such excuses for not just getting on with the story the way I usually do. Which if I'd done, would've probably meant I had it finished by now. lol
Yes, you ARE one of my favorite photographers and I'll say so again. I love your work. It inspires me in more than one way-- your nature photography sometimes draws me off toward writing fantasy too, anything that close to nature starts making me think about writing too even if I don't always get overdescriptive. I still see it in my mind.
Purr. I just hope the colour version is as good as the black and white, though I'll still scan it even if it's not.
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Thank you so much Robert. My thoughts are with you as well
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awww its awwl cuuute and fwuffy! and very proportional i might add... +brownie points cause its a cheeta common who doesnt like a cheeta? i shure love'um!
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I love cheetahs and all big cats, and this one's so wild and ready to run and alert. I do need to reconstruct the original someday. Thank you!
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i will be watching for it!
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This is phenomenal, Robert! The cheetah literally LEAPS off of the page, and I wish it were real, because I believe that I should be able to pet it and hear it purr that big cat purr. Not that it doesn't already feel real in presence. Despite the loss of its original color, it portrays great patience and finesse. Damn the idiot who stole this labor of love; I'd bawl my eyes out over such a crime.
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Thank you! I so want to -- and I am so tempted to transpose him into other media too. I might capture the spirit of the original piece in some attempt to transpose, easier than trying to copy stroke by stroke -- but either way I think even the copies will come out cool. Thank you so much!
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I bet it was a pain to do! The shading is awesomely realistic also !
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Purrr thanks! It took a long time, I haven't done animal drawings like this for a while because they're very slow. But I want to reconstruct this one.
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awww this is too cute love the far off expression on it nice work.
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Thanks! Purrr... yeah, his far off expression was something so powerful because I was sitting there at work longing to be off on safari in Africa instead of stuck in front of a machine doing overtime! lol
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Purr -- it was years ago and is a major trophy to my stubbornness -- the shop got backed up at my print shop and I decided to get it done no matter what. I think having a 48 hour workday is a heck of an achievement. Doing that cheetah kept me sane and awake while I was doing it. If I had to do it again and had the strength to I'd probably write a good chunk of a novel on the side.
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sound slike quite a story coul dbe told by this picture
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Hehehe. It always had those stories about how I did it, now maybe I can do it again and see if I can add some more!
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sounds like a good idea
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I'm still ruminating on it but I may do it sometime soon, I hope.
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He's beautiful.
Lovely job with the fur texture . . . you almost want to pet him.
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Purr thanks! Yeah, I did while I was drawing him too. This is about as close as I'll ever get to a pet cheetah.
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Not unless you move to Africa and adopt one from the local SPCA
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True.
Or wind up living in a house with a large yard and have the resources to volunteer for the "raise the cubs" programs, taking care of kittens and then letting them go back to the zoo when they get older. A lot of zoos have programs where volunteers take care of the younger zoo bred animals. I don't know if I'd have the strength to keep up with it though, that's what held me back. I'd want to be a lot more stable both financially and physically for that big a commitment.
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That looks so great even as a xerox. I can only imagine what the original looked like. I love the big cats family. I can't wait to see this piece reconstructed. I'm sure it's gonna be just as great as the other one, if not better since you've practived more and learned a few things since then ^^
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I hope so. I'll do it soon, I think. Though I may do some variations working up to it and those may be good art too. I'm half thinking of doing pen and ink with watercolor for one of them.
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Wow, I was blown away from just the thumbnail of this picture already, then when I viewed it ... well it's just wonderful and amazing! The fur and the patterns and lines in the fur are beautifully done. You've created a wonderful picture here!!! I love it! ~E.
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Purr, thank you. I just hope I can succeed in recreating the original, it was much more powerful in color. Though this shows me that part of its power was my getting all the values great.
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As a lover of drawing animals and wildlife, I think you did an amazing job. Cats are actually hard to draw, at least for me... their faces sortof remind me of a human's in that they have proportions that you have to be careful about, especially when drawing a cat facing the viewer (not to say that other animals don't have proportions.). I like the texture of the fur, and if I look closely it looks like you drew every single follicle of fur individually. I also think that the darkened eyes give it character, and I like the technique of picking out the whiskers with an eraser. Awesome job! ((You should do more like this 
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I should, and I'm going to after I finish reconstructing this one. I didn't pick out the whiskers with an eraser. I drew around them carefully so that they'd show, that is reserved white done very carefully. I drew around them to get the outlines clean.
I learned a good trick for it in colored pencil though! If you use a hard white pencil, like Verithins, and draw the whiskers onto the paper pressing hard before going over it with the darks, then lay in the darks lightly in several layers without crushing the paper, the white whiskers will pop out all by themselves. It takes being careful not to crush the grain of the paper at all in doing the darks. RoseArt or any inexpensive kid colored pencils will do for using the white one. It might work even using the white from the same set that you're using for the rest, but it's important to pay attention to pressure and have a sharp point on the white pencil. Then let the dark pencils blunt a little and shade gently doing more than one layer instead of trying to get full saturation on the first go. Try it on scratch paper sometime as long as it's cold press texture, smooth papers would be harder to get that effect.
I will probably get the whiskers a little cleaner on the new version because I know that and have Verithins to do it now.
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