Totem Card: Leopards

For the Totem Cards Project, here's the Leopards Card: leopard (Panthera pardus), clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), and snow leopard (Uncia uncia).

For this card, I wanted to try using acrylic paint - which I haven't used full-scale in years, in a different style than my usual - LOTS of hairs - but I struggled with this a lot. Apparently my acrylics are too heavy-bodied for fine detail work, plus I just plain need practice, so this needed a LOT of retouching.

I tried for a realistic, but not photorealistic, look; though I love art of ALL KINDS, personally I still prefer to paint more like an "illustrator" than a true photorealist, if that makes sense. Still, I did try very hard to push myself out of my comfort zome with this one. Suffice it to say, even though I do not consider this a success, it was quite a learning experience (and there are many things I would change if I re-did it), and an enjoyable one at that, as leopards are among my favorite animals of all!

There are many variations in the various spotting patterns and coat colors of these cats, though I tried to go with more typical colorations for these.

Details of the big cats in Scraps:
Leopard: synnabar.deviantart.com/art/To…
Clouded leopard: synnabar.deviantart.com/art/To…
Snow Leopard: synnabar.deviantart.com/art/To…

Acrylic, Micron pen, gold ink, graphite, on cold-press illustration board. Touchups in Photoshop CS.