One of my high school art instructors was a silkscreen artist and he drew images of people, etc. using heavy outlines and shapes. Hi style was impressive and 2 years after graduating from high school I applied his technique in creating this pencil portrait of a lion. My intent was to make a somewhat abstract but recognizable portrait using outlines and shapes. In 1987, I created a "cartoon" (an outline template) and using carbon sheets transferred the image from my outline sketch onto the illustration board. I created three of these portraits the first one in 1987, the second one in 1988, and this one in 1989.

In 1987, I hadn't begun working in color; color wouldn't appear in my artwork until 1990 after years of learning how to draw with pencil first. A friend once asked if I would ever do this same portrait in color with Prismacolor pencil and my answer was I don't know! Color would be different and who knows maybe one day ...we'll see.