I’m a member of the Society for All Artists (SAA) and they held a WWF Global Tiger Day challenge. The aim was to paint tigers to highlight their plight.

The idea I had was a cub with it’s mother, the cub being the future of tigers.

Wanting to keep the piece relatively simple, I worked solely in Mars Black Lumograph pencils, giving a nice dark black for the stripe areas.

I entered my work, and waited.

In July 2019, the results were published in the SAA’s magazine. 

I was delighted to see my drawing had made the final 10, all of which were printed in that issue.

The text I wrote to accompany my entry was as follows:

‘Looking to the Future’

My picture shows a tigress looking down at her cub, both unaware of the crisis surrounding their species.

They are the first tigers I have drawn and kept it relatively simple, using only a couple of pencil grades, trying to capture the playfulness and innocence of the cub.

Mars Lumograph black pencils on Derwent smooth watercolour paper. From a reference photo by Natasha Jefferies at Wildlife Reference Photos.