King of all he surveys

Well, I could have put King of the Jungle, but lions don't tend to live in jungles. Please correct me if I am wrong, but don't they roam the great plains of Africa, Kalahari being one of them? They also roam or walk in constrained environments of many a zoo around the world, looking not quite so majestic and generally a little sorry for themselves, or is that me just anthropomorphising?

BTW highly recommend the BBC Africa series, the first episode with the fighting giraffes is quite astonishing. Fabulous photography and the lovely tones of Mr. Attenborough to add the appropriate gravitas.

So why this lion theme? Well I cam across a photo the other week of a lion on 500px in fantastic orange-ish light. Have to be honest not sure that he is in the desert or not, but the colour is great (but it does matter how you look at the photo, on my laptop, not orange-ish at all.

So I thought I would attempt a real great cat, after having done, what I have been told is a great cat Loki back before Christmas (a Maine Coon cat - big and hairy - (sounds like your sons - ed)),.Saturday afternoon I had a lion-goggling search through 1000'a and I really do mean 1000's of lion pictures for the one picture I wanted to use as the basis for my painting, namely Lion by Alan Hinchcliffe.

 I will apply for and get an artistic licence for my representation, but Alan has taken a fabulous photo, go and buy a copy from him.

What I have ended up with so far is the initial cut and then a bit of filling in to give me this. Now this (obviously - ed ) needs a bit more work, I feel it is a little all over the place. Going to make the lion appear to be on a large rock, with the plains of the Kalahari off to the left, maybe with a hint of a herd of zebras. We shall see. But not happy with his body, reckon I might have to add a rear leg coming into view as his body just doesn't look right. Also have to work on his Mohican, wasn't bad for a while, then I bodged it a little and now not at all happy with it. Whether I like the result or not, I will put a link to the 'finished article' probably here at some point in the future.

Postscript

The lion painting has moved on a little bit, closer to completion than it was. Can you splot (or spot) the deliberate error, obviously for artistic licence..