Whether you do or do not, this lioness is coming for them! And in the absence of tasty treats, she may just decide to use you as one.

Drawn with two types of pencils ( a crappy HB and a more serious 4B one ), patience and crazy amounts of skill, I have finally managed to produce the faint resemblance of a fully detailed, fully shaded drawing. As with most prototypes, this one has a few imperfections. The blending is questionable, and the shaded patches look more like markings than anything else. Still, if you want my fair opinion on this piece of art, I'll be straight with you and tell you this.

I can't be more proud than what I accomplished. With this drawing, I have fulfilled one of the very first goals and and ambitions I set when I embarked in this remarkable journey. Two years later, and with an extra of 70 hours of drawing practice under my belt ( yes, that's how much I drew in TWO YEARS ), I made my first realistic drawing from a reference. My first steps were marked with failures, frustration, and a lot of setbacks. I was on a constant source of reassurance and tutorials to prove myself I can draw, but more often than not I found excuses on why I cannot do it. It was much simple to give up than struggle. But as months passed, my inspiration never dwindled. I looked at all these good artists and wondered how long it took for them to reach that level of skill. Years, probably. So why the heck was I complaining, when I have so much time ahead of me?

Ultimately, I drew here and then whenever I had a streak of good mood. That worked, yet moods are hardly reliable. I was lucky to produce three drawings per week...and even those were simple and lacked any sort of detail.

However, since the beginning of march 2014, I made the effort to draw every day. I had good and bad days, like any person, but despite everything else, I had proof. With every drawing I made, I was proving to myself that I can do it. That I can get better at it. And that, my friends, is how these uploads came to be ( and many more will come in the future ).

There's many things to talk about this drawing, but I'll wrap them up in a single, all in once sentence.

This lioness looks good! I know I still have a long way to go before I draw like those artists I always envy, but for the time being I'll just bask in my temporary success. My thanks to the DA community for providing a well for inspiration, big cats, and of course, my (sometimes) unreliable determination. Without those, you would've gotten a stick figure instead of what you see above. Cliche, but it sums how I feel about it.