Art History (mine, not the college kind).

After I started working full-time at Another Rainbow/Gladstone in the late 80s, my personal artwork output trickled to near zilch for a long time. Since comic book production of that era (at least at our company) meant using rapidographs and white-out to touch-up stats, and painting photocopies with watercolors to create color guides, I didn't feel inspired to clutch a pen or paintbrush much after I got home in the evening--unless I was doing freelance color work, which meant a paycheck.

Occasional I'd make myself sit down in front of a blank piece of paper long enough to get a groove going, and turn out a piece of work that reminded me I could draw and paint well enough if I'd put in the effort.

Going through the odds and ends I did during eleven years of day-jobbing, there are examples of my usual subjects: dragons, horses and big cats--but especially the mountain lion, aka cougar, puma, catamount and panther. (Is there any other animal that has a different name for each region it lives in?) I love their striking look, that sense of housecat grown to prehistoric size.

Here are five paintings of cougars I did from '89 to '99; more than any other big cat in my limited repertoire.