Snow Leopard Drawing

No creative title for this drawing (just called "Snow Leopard"), but I'm very pleased with the result. It's a small drawing - on a 4" x 4" piece of Claybord - but there's still quite a bit of detail. Claybord (yes, that's the correct spelling) is a brand of scratchboard made by Ampersand. I've been using it lately since the scratchboard brands I was using have either changed drastically (EssDee) or are difficult to get (Scratch-Art's Paris professional). I have a stash of the old EssDee and the Paris, but I'm reserving those for pet portrait commissions and special projects. The Ampersand is easy to find and is a nice surface, so I'm using it for not-commissioned pieces such as this leopard and the orangutan. I've also started using it in the classes I teach.

I took the reference photo of this leopard at the Sacramento Zoo.


A detail of the drawing

I tried a new way to frame this piece - the Claybord is a 1/8" thick board and can be framed without glass if it's sprayed with Claybord Fixative. This was the first time I tried the fixative and it worked really well. So I just affixed the drawing to a 5" x 5" piece of black mat board and set that into a 5" x 5" wooden frame. Simple, not very expensive and no glass to clean! I really don't enjoy framing, so this was a great way to handle it.


Framed drawing

The drawing will be available at the Auburn Old Town Gallery (the artists's co-op I belong to) sometime early this week.

Note cards with the image are available on-line in my Bonanzle shop.