🦁 Rawr!

This happy fella has a scaly meal. Prompt was provided via the LeoFinance Zealy Adoption campaign (where anyone on Hive can compete for a $10,000 USD prize pool, all in the name of generating more activity on Hive!)
 

🛠️ Tools

I used some reference images on Google ("cartoon lion").
Illustration was done "freehand" (mousehand?) using GIMP software.
 

🎨 Process

After studying the reference image for a hot minute, I started with the dragon head and outlined my lion fren around it:

Smooth stroking was used to keep the lines, well, smooth. It was tough to get used to, as when you move slowly the line trails your cursor to allow for fine movements. Lots of CTRL+Z's were employed.

Next was some basic colouring. Fills, mostly. A few textural accents but no highlights or shadowing, mainly because my skills there are suspect and I wanted to get a flat cartoon vibe anyway. Oh, and the tail came in. The tail was legit the most challenging part of this for some reason.

I wanted some background... something. I do these doodles with ink that are basically stream of consciousness shapes, swirls, lines... so I tried to replicate that on a different layer in GIMP. Turned out okay. Here's the start of that:

Finally, the polish. A tweak here, an erase there. Added a signature and played with the background layer opacity. Touched up the background in spots that I thought needed more jazz and shipped it!

It was certainly a fun way to spend the morning! And I'm looking forward to the future challenges in the art quests for this big campaign (👉 join up here! Open to all Hivers).
 

Thank you for taking a look and reading. All the images above are of my own creation. Art for the Hunting Midnight banner below was built by me in Canva, using the Hunting Midnight original cover art.