Video showing stages of my watercolour painting, Sleeping Lion, seen in Tanzania, which appears on the front cover of my book

The posture of the sleeping lion appealed to me. I was surprised how gentle it made him appear. With his paw resting under his muzzle he was an enormous, if awesome, cat at rest. He lay so still that flies rested undisturbed on his face.

Here’s how I made the painting (video)

Using pencil sketches, and my photos, I looked at the many colours I could see in the lion’s body and surrounding background. Then I looked for key points in the pose. I liked this lion’s mane, which sticks out like a worn brush, and I loved the curve of his lower limb resting diagonally across his body, especially the crook where the paw bends.

Check out the stages in the video.

Image 1

• I first drew the shape of the foreleg using a pale line of Payne’s grey. Then, as well as delineating his mouth, I used the same colour to wash in the shadow under the lion’s paw, and the other dark shadows where the chin and nose touch the ground. I also painted some on the mane’s dark area with Payne’s grey. Cadmium yellow, Naples yellow, and yellow ochre (sometimes mixed with a touch of Indian red) were used to map in more of the mane, especially where it joined the head; this gave me a frame to the face. The main tonal areas were then established.

Image 2

• I continued to build up the tones to develop the lion’s shape and shadows. I could see this was going to be a predominantly ‘warm’ painting, comprising mainly reds, oranges and yellows, but it was important to retain a minority of cool colours to act as a counterbalance. Lemon yellow provided a cooler yellow for some of the body tones. Cobalt blue was added to give some brighter cool tones to the foreleg, and belly, and more sepia was laid on the shadows under his paw.

Image 3

• Mixtures of the colours used in Stage 2, forming blues and greens were introduced as washes of increasing colour strength around the edges of the focal areas of the lion to suggest the grassy background. A Payne’s grey and yellow ochre wash outlined the lion’s curved flank. I also drew round the outer edges of the lion’s ragged mane with two paler green washes, carefully leaving some fine white lines of paper exposed to suggest individual hairs both here and around the paw; I always try to give attention to the edge of an animal’s skin, fur or hair which can contribute a great deal to the overall sense of his or her surface texture.

Image 4

• More washes were laid, often the underlayers drying before others were added because I was constantly moving around the image. But if they didn’t dry and the colours bled into each other that was fine too, and added painterly interest. Some cobalt blue was added to the face near the mane edge and, combining it with yellow ochre, was also used on the lion’s paw to help bring it more forward in the picture as a central focus. Some dry-brush streaks of a varying mixture of sepia and Payne’s grey were added to the mane to increase the hair-like texture, and the same colour mix was used in greater intensity to enhance some of the darker shadows.

• Most of the finer details were painted at this stage. A touch of diluted rose madder, ideal for animal noses (especially young ones), was washed onto the lion’s nose, but then toned down with some Indian red. Finally, some tiny streaks of white paint were applied to suggest more hairs on the lion’s chin, where it had been difficult to leave blank paper without breaking the flow of the line on the upper edge of the paw. Some white paint was also used to mark a few blade of grass in the foreground.

(left) My travelling paint box. (right) Preliminary sketches I made of a lion in Tanzania.