Yikes stripes!

Here's an easy way to tell the three species of zebras apart: Plains zebras are green, Mountain zebras are purple, and Grevy's zebras are blue.


Stylized gouache zebras influenced by the art of Mary Blair. I've been playing in my black sketchbook again. I painted this laying on my bed, trying not to let my cat spill the water.

Cheetahs Never Prosper

Even though my art isn't usually very stylized, I like good stylization and playing around with how far you can go with something and have it still be recognizable. I first drew this cheetah realistically from some zoo pictures. Then I made it a little simpler but still semi-realistic.

After that, I squinted at it and looked for the overall shape, which was pretty much 2 triangles. In the third drawing I made the spots bigger but put fewer of them on there. Finally, I went a bit overboard and simplified it a lot. The main things I concluded you need to still read as "cheetah" are spots, the eye/muzzle markings, and long body. For the last one, I thought I needed to add the tail on to make it work, and color it yellow. Looks like I could make an alphabet out of these guys.