I chose to use the cheetah as my inspiration. When I was a child I loved watching documentaries about wildlife and I was very interested in all the big cats, their eyes appealed to me. One of my favourites was the leopard, because in addition to their strength, leopards give me a sense of softness compared to felines like tigers or lions, and they are agile, fast, fierce, powerful and agile at the same time.

I particularly like this image in which you can clearly see his stunning blue eyes, perfect white whiskers and the leopard's unique spotted pattern, overall this is a very beautiful shot of the side face. In choosing the image I wanted to convey a sense of power and beauty, and with my scarf design in mind I wanted my scarf to be wild and bold.

This photo was originally in colour, but to see the leopard's distinctive pattern more clearly I used a black and white filter and enhanced the contrast and sharpening.

The first photo was the first step in my work for Task 1. I started by circling the rough outline and size I needed to use with the pen tool, excluding the extra leopard body and background. 

For the second image, after confirming the size of the image, I adjusted the Stroke of the lines of the outer outline to 3Pt to depict the approximate outline, including the head, beard, eyes, nose, mouth and neck. 

For the third image, I started to add detail by drawing the spots with a finer line, which gives more flexibility and differentiates the 'detail' from the 'subject', and by adjusting the brush strokes in the shadows and highlights of the leopard, and because I wanted the leopard to look more powerful, I adjusted the outline of the spots to an irregular geometric pattern to make it look more angular.

In Task 2, I started by fixing the base tone on the leopard's face and then using gradient colours to draw out the spots so that the spots appeared to change from highlights to shadows, I used dark spots to represent the darkest shadows and light browns to represent the lighted side rather than white or black.

Once I had developed the tone map, I started to process the different sections using various Effects to add detail to the image. I used Color Halftone in Pixelate to create the blue eyes of the leopard and then overdid it from the eyes to the ears. Using Crystallize to add a layer of edge to the largest outer outline to mimic the feel of the leopard's fur.

In the end I chose to overlay and change the colour palette in such a way as to give the leopard an 'optical illusion' that it looks like the head has been split in half, which helped me to make additional designs later.

This is my final design and I have used a monochrome colour scheme of different intensities of brown with a blue eye. For the leopard, I used brown and gold to represent his fearlessness, strength, boldness and nobility, with a blue eye for contrast. As the object I chose contains many lines and shapes such as the outer contours, whiskers, spots, I focused on the colour palette to keep the image neat and tidy. Different browns were used to represent the shadows, mid tones and highlights. I found this step very challenging, how to use one shade over a large area without making it boring, I think I succeeded in my challenge.

I experimented a lot with the final design and background, I tried using a lot of checkerboard squares for the background but I thought it looked a bit cluttered and too dark, so I changed the background to make a grass like background (leopards live in grasslands), lowered the colour saturation and added regular circles of green and it looked much better.

For my final design, I focused on a harmonious colour palette throughout, using just the right amount of contrasting colours, and I worked hard to create cohesion. I kept the green grass background and added a mauve pointed border and initials, while also creating an optical illusion. I wanted to convey the wildness of the leopard on the grassland, while it also looks handsome and powerful. I think the leopard is more aggressive, so I used more curves and circles in the background backdrop, which I thought would make the image more harmonious, if it was all sharp horns it would give the impression of being too strong, as I said before, the leopard gives me a personal feeling of being both strong and soft. I think there is still room for tweaking the colours and shapes, maybe I will try more colour schemes and shapes in the future.