cheetah vs. Leapard

Hey guys. Another topic made me want to start this. How do you paint your leapards different than your cheetahs? I know what they ACTUALLY look like, (leapards have a brown center, and cheetahs just have solid, mis-shapen ovals), but it seems most paint the spots about the same. Thoughts? Pictures?

....................GO!

Anyone? Buehler??

Your mic was off!

I paint them just the way you described above. Most kids don't know the difference, but if they ask for a cheetah they get the open spots. I think they're more fun to do anyway.

Look at photos of the actual animals and you will see what the differences are - and they are pretty substantial.

You made me Google cheetah faces and leopard faces, Shannon.... as if I didn't have enough distractions.... lol

There really is a striking difference between the two. However, I noticed in each and every image I looked at that neither animal had any open spots on the face... just spots, period. The leopard has the open spots on his coat and the cheetah has the oval looking ones.

You'd think I would have remembered after watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom episodes every week of my childhood!

And here we have Jim being stalked by a leopard... tell us what's happening Jim.

Jim?

I totally agree Shannon. That's why I wanted to start the topic. I googled the images of the actual animals and was surprised. I generally don't see any faces of "cheetahs" done with closed oval spots... which is actually what they look like. I think I will paint both and post them later.

Shannon has a great example. My new cheetah is based off pictures. But yeah, the leopard has a pretty plain face compared to the rest of him so I started only putting the large rosettes at the edges to get that leopard look and getting smaller down to dots toward the focal point. My cats started looking a lot better when I started adding small dots as filler in between dots and toward the middle.









Before with larger spots

I do think that having the open spots on the leopoard, which can be filled in with a complimentary color, makes for a more interesting face paint, though.

Denise, LOVE how you painted the teeth on the bottom lip (first pic)!They look so real!

Love all of you pearl paints, D!

Pilareta, I don't know if you caught the other thread about the cheetah but I paint the lip BELOW the actual lip line and then when you paint the teeth on, it looks like a tongue...like the cheetah's panting. I haven't been able to get it as nice on a kid because they wiggle, but they still love the look. Here's one at rest so you can see it better.

I agree that leopards look more interesting with at least a few of the open spots.

I didn't catch the other thread about cheetahs when you posted it, but I did it a moment ago. The tongue/lip trick is really effective, WOW!