The World’s Fastest Land Animal

Today my page is inspired by “Nature’s Wonders”, which is the theme hosted by Gill over at Art Journal Journey. The cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world, so I thought it was fitting to create a page in tribute to this gorgeous feline!

I started by smooshing diluted Spectrum Aqua markers onto the page using an acrylic block. Using a homemade mask I stamped circles of animal print using black Archival Ink, then splattered the whole page with Liquitex black acrylic paint. I cut out circles of decoupage papers and stuck them on top of the animal print circles using a UHU Stic. Once the glue had dried I outlined the circles with black Uni Pin marker and I doodled different African style patterns around each circle. The images and script are from old encyclopaedias and I highlighted information relevant to the cheetah – if you look closely you may see a cheetah sitting under a tree in the shade while looking out over the grassland. The cheetahs are from a doodle book that I painted using diluted Aqua marker ink and then cut out using scissors. I stamped some cheetah facts and added a beautiful postage stamp. To finish I added rhinestones the same colour as the postage stamp to highlight the text and balance the colours.

This postage stamp is from my hubby’s childhood stamp collection, it features a cheetah and her cubs and is from Nigeria dating back to 1965.

When I told my hubby I was thinking of doing a cheetah page to join AJJ, a happy coincidence occurred! My hubby told me he had recently watched a video on the cheetahs running ability and comparing it to the Greyhound. Here’s the link if you want to have a look. You can see why cheetahs are the world’s fastest land animal with their rotary gallop and it’s amazing ability to increase its strides per minute, spectacular!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page:

• Spectrum Aqua Artist’s Marker (Yellow, Terracotta, Gold)
• Liquitex Artist Color Acrylic (Ivory Black)
• Ranger Archival Ink (Jet Black)
• Uni Pin Fine Line Marker (Black 0.1mm and 0.8mm)
• Hobbycraft clear stamp (A6 Animal Print Background 50350HC)
• Dovecraft upper and lower case alphabet stamp set (WDN Alpha Stmp DCVW0050)
• Vivi Gade decoupage paper (Skagen 25561)
• Poundland DécoTime (Patch Paper DS9454)
• North Parade Sudoku and Doodle (Animal Kingdom)
• Dorling Kindersley Illustrated Family Encyclopaedia
• Pear’s Cyclopaedia 2007-2008 Edition
• Postage stamp
• Poundland self-adhesive gems (504 Gems)
• UHU Stic
• The Range double-sided foam tape