Sustained Investigation #6

habitat destruction.

15 ½’’ x 21 ½’’

watercolor, ink, graphite

Asiatic cheetahs are endangered due to habitat destruction. Many people think that there is only one kind of cheetah: the African cheetah, but this is false- there are also Asiatic cheetahs. African cheetahs have a pretty stable population, but Asiatic cheetahs are critically endangered. I stuck with my cat theme but drew a cheetah instead of cats I normally draw (ie. tigers, lions, etc). I also really like using ink and I wanted to experiment more with it.

I used Dr. Ph. Martin's Hyrdus watercolor (yellow, sepia, dark yellow, dark brown). I used simple black watercolor for the sky. I used peach, beige, goldenrod, black, cream, and maroon Prismacolors for the cheetah and H, 2B, and 4B graphite pencils for the grass.

I first created my own reference image using Acorn. I took the head of a cheetah and put it on a different body and put that into a different background. Next, I made a grid on the paper and drew the simple sketch and colored it with the Prismacolors. I cut it out of the drawing paper and traced it onto watercolor paper. I painted the lighter yellows on first, then added the darker browns and yellows. After it dried, I glued the cheetah down. I originally just had the cheetah sitting in the grass in the middle of the paper, but it looked very blank, so I decided to add a background. I used graphite pencil to make a simple grass pattern; I still wanted to show how the habitat is growing smaller and smaller. At the top of the page, I have a gray sky done in watercolor. My next steps would be to redo the cheetah in watercolor, because he looks a little odd.