I’ve been working on this painting of a black panther for quite some time. I went to the Santago Leopard project a while ago and saw this incredibly beautiful black leopard there. I was stunned by the sheer physicality of him! So much more muscular than the other big cats who looked like slender super models . He looked more like a bear! I started off with an idea for the cat to be looking up at a peacock, as both are from India. But it just didn’t look right. So I left the painting for a while and came back to it again recently.

Black Panther
16×12 oil on board

When I looked at it again I realised that the bird had no emotional content. The only thing that had any power was the panther! All along I had been unconsciously exploring my feeling of his size and presence in the painting and the poor bird had become irrelevant. So I cut the painting down to just the panther looking up into the trees and suddenly the painting sprang into life!

It just goes to show that sometimes you think you’re painting one thing, when really you’re painting something else entirely!

This is a sketch for a new painting of an Indian black leopard looking up at a white peacock. I wanted to paint this pose, with the leopard looking up and thought a peacock would make a good contrast to the leopard. They both come from India so they should work well in the same painting. Now I need to create a background for them.