After a friend visited the Serengeti National park last year, he asked if I’d paint some of the photos that he took while he was there. These were 3 of them.
The challenge, more than the cats themselves, was the grass. There are some ways to simplify painting grass, but as grass featured in these three so prominently, it was important to avoid the short-cuts. It makes me think of all the grass that covers Silvermere at the moment, since the good rains of the past four months. The sheep get lost amongst it and looking for them is quite difficult. When we walk in the veld, grass seeds work their way into our socks if we don’t wear very long trousers and high boots. Looking out over the vales of waving grass, it really looks more like cattle country, than karoo veld; and is reminiscent of the tall savannah-grassveld in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) where I grew up.
I would like to make a correction here, since speaking to the client. These cats were all photographed in the Kenyan side of the Reserve, which is called the Maasai Mara National Park.
An early study. Pastel. 1974
