A.K.A. "Just in time to be too late for the latest furry bandwagon."

ALSO VIEWABLE ON THESE SITES
Twitter / DeviantArt

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I wanted to take a break from drawing my characters in favor of something else and ultimately decided to give fan art a go! After all, I enjoy (Franchise) and I like artwork made by fans of (Franchise), plus it's a good way to attract new followers! After weeks of struggling to get anything good down, I eventually caught wind of a bunch of people drawing this leopard lady on Twitter in the wake of a recent trailer that dropped for Kirby and the Forgotten Land and felt inspired enough to try my own hand at it, albeit with... mixed results.

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So, Clawroline... what an odd design for a Kirby character. I've admittedly been out of the Kirby loop for a long time now and haven't played any of the games since Return to Dream Land (and Kirby 64 before that), but when I think of someone who hails from that franchise, I... don't imagine them having sexy eye makeup and the most child-bearing of hips. But then came Clawroline - the "Lethal Leopard" from that upcoming Kirby game - and I'm still struggling to believe this is a Kirby character.

Since everyone else was making their own spin on the character and oftentimes anthropomorphizing her design even further, I decided to try that. I actually had a pretty hard time drawing this character due to being so out of practice with anything that isn't my dragons; I spent the first few days just sketching her face over and over again trying to look as good as it does. The body came relatively easy and the legs gave me surprisingly little trouble, though the hands were tad bit tricky since I had to factor in her large extendable claws. But then came the coloring...

Oh God, the coloring... if this was a digital drawing, I wouldn't have had any issues. But when it comes to pen sketches, yellow is not a nice color to play with, especially not in large quantities like this. I went through several drafts trying to get it right; I had no idea how to go about shading the damn color nor could I successfully figure out how to get it to transition to a more golden hue without making things look too orange. And those spots weren't much better... I clearly overdid the coloring on the centers for most of them, but this was the best I could do with them with the materials I had on hand. I've never drawn a leopard before, and it shows... but I at least managed to pull through with a sketch that's at least somewhat presentable.

But what do you all think? Did I at least do okay-ish? Let me know in the comments!

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Artwork by  SilverMelee, A.K.A. myself.

Clawroline is property of HAL Laboratory.

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Part of my "Day Job Doodle" series (formerly "Trash Drawings"), in which I make drawings at work using whatever materials I can find on site (those being random ball-point pens and random cardboard scraps).





BONUS
First Draft
My initial "successful" attempt at drawing the character past her face. This was after repeated practice attempts getting her face "right" that I would continue to refine with subsequent drafts. Had a tough time determining a pose; the initial idea had her prepping a vertical swipe attack that I couldn't get the perspective right on, and ultimately settled on this leaping pose of her showing off her claws that I thought didn't look too bad.