Realistic lion painting

Sunday, 17 May, 2020

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Hi friends I’ll show you my new painting: is a lion entirely hand painted on a 100 cm x 100 cm canvas with acrylic colors.

I chose this subject because I was struck by the intensity and depth of his gaze that looks beyond the horizon. I preferred to paint it in black and white to emphasize the contrasts between the lights and the shadows. I chose a frame that highlights the muzzle because the effect I want to achieve is that the viewer has the impression of being in front of the animal in its real size and that it seems to come out of the canvas.

Watch the video on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CASB8PzI6pX/

Watch the video on Facebook with some stages of the realization:

https://www.facebook.com/100007172895231/videos/2592772330971838/

Watch the full video on Youtube with all stages of the realization:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px2OWOKte2Y

Look at the gallery with all my paintings: https://www.tizianasanna.com/en/animals

All my paintings are entirely handpainted and are unique and original pieces with a certificate of authenticity.

I use colors and materials of the best brands, large and high quality canvases mounted on a 4 cm thick frame. The painting continues on all edges and is immediately ready to be exhibited in the environment you prefer.

The result is a very modern work of the highest quality, with attention to every detail.

My artworks, of hyperrealistic and with a photographic style, have got as main subjects animals, mostly exotic ones such as elephants, giraffes or leopards, or typical of the Sardinian territory. I manage to highlight the details, meticulously cared for, and to focus attention on the subject, which is the only character of the work: the background, in fact, is absent, it is mostly monochrome and it emphasizes the focus on the animal, abstracting and extracting it from a real space.

My style is defined as pop - hyperrealism because the subjects are painted following a detailed technique, but their position in an unreal space gives the artworks features that are more typical of pop art, so hyperrealism and a graphic style melt. I use different techniques according to the subject and the effects I want to obtein.

Some information about the lion, the alpha predator.

The lion (Panthera leo) is a carnivorous mammal from the Felidae family. After the tiger, it is the largest of the five large felids of the Panthera genus, its body mass exceeding 250 kg. Since 2011 he has lived almost exclusively in sub-Saharan Africa; the continued depletion of its natural habitat and the continuation of poaching against it make it a vulnerable species according to the IUCN. This definition is justified by an estimated decline of 30 to 50% in the African area in the previous twenty years. A very small population survives in the Gir Forest National Park in India, while the specimens that inhabited North Africa and the Middle East have disappeared for many centuries. Until about ten thousand years ago, the lion was the second most common large mammal after humans. At that time, lions were found in most of Eurasia and Africa, and even in North America from Yukon to Peru.

It is a so-called alpha predator, i.e. it ranks at the top of the food chain, having no predators in nature, apart from man (and exceptionally the Nile crocodile), but nevertheless, it can perform looting in case of extreme need. Lions do not hunt man regularly, but some particular specimens have done so. For both the African and Asian subspecies, it became necessary to create and maintain national parks and reserves. The best known are the Etosha National Park in Namibia, the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, and the Kruger National Park in the eastern part of South Africa.

Outside of these areas, the contrasts between lions and men or livestock are typically resolved by eliminating felines. In India, the last refuge for the Asiatic lion is the Gir Forest National Park, 1412 km² wide and located in the west of the country. The park was home to 359 lions in 2005. As in Africa, numerous men's homes are located near the park, resulting in clashes between lions, domestic cattle, locals and forest officials. The project for the reintroduction of the Asiatic lion is aimed at establishing a second independent population in the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in the state of Madhya Pradesh. This second population would aim to create the necessary genetic diversity for the survival of the species. An example are the twelve lions of the Port Lympne Zoo in Kent, England, which are descendants of the animals owned by the King of Morocco. Eleven other lions live in the Addis Ababa zoo and are expected to descend from animals owned by Emperor Haile Selassie I. WildLink International, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, has launched the ambitious Barbary Lion Project, aimed at identifying and breeding Berber lions in captivity to reintroduce them to the Atlas National Park in Morocco.

In the photo: hyperrealistic lion painting made with acrylic colors on a canvas 100 cm x 1000 cm by Tisha (Tiziana Sanna)