Lion face using Coliro metallics on Stonehenge 600gsm black paper

This was a devil to do and I got myself tied in knots. Even so, it looks better in the journal than on the photograph. The camera lens cannot quite catch the luminescence of the paint and the silver hair of the lion looks bluish in the photo.  If I were to do it all again, I'd do it differently with more dragging effect. I didn't decide to drag the side of my brush across the paper until I had done much of it and I think that technique has given the painting an interesting effect. I used a fan brush to do the lion's mane but kept getting blobs. When I swept the brush first over a scrap piece of paper to stop that, then there wasn't enough paint to be effective on the painting and I ended up going back to a plain old brush. sigh. Still, it was a learning curve and, to a degree, I enjoyed the challenge. 
Speaking of plain old brushes. Metallics can be rough on expensive watercolour brushes so I used brushes from a set of 50 which I bought on Amazon. They come in handy for applying masking fluid and all sorts of things. I've put a link to them on my External Links Page

The subject is an old African lion which was photographed by IanZ at Pixabay and was free to download and use, thank you Ian. The photograph is far more emotive than my poor interpretation of it, it pulls at my heartstrings. I've placed a link to the photo on my External Links Page.   

In the photo you cannot see the top of the lion's head, all is in darkness, but it looks right. When I tried to paint it that way it just looked like the lion had gone bald but when I tried to fix it, it looked like it had had a bad hair day! 😀I tried again and the above result is closer and I don't suppose a totally bad attempt.