American Lion continues

This is the rear end of the lion, it's well padded at this point.

The front view of the leg as well as being a little on the plump side, there is practically no definition of the muscles of the leg.  I crayon in the bony area of the leg first, I'll move on to the muscles later.

I am finishing the lion from the nose backward.  Everything in the body is too big - I always cut wide of the mark.  At this point I can push thing around a little bit - the form can be a bit higher or lower (by a couple inches or so).  By establishing the head first I have a starting point for finding the rest of the body.  I absolutely hate taking measurements from the model and finding them on the sculpture.  I much prefer to go by eye.  About this time I go back to the photographic reference I used to make the model. 

I define the left foreleg of the big cat.  I have actually moved it out, more in front than I had in the model - The more I lived with the model the more I felt that the left paw was too far under the lion and gave the lion a sense of being out of balance.

I draw the features of the lions face, I also begin forming the right foot.

After I mark the lines of the face I still cut wide - the chin is super wide, looks like she's smiling.

The lines are muscles the cross hatched areas are too high and need to be cut down.

Not only is the chin wide it is also too big over all.

more refinement of forms - I am also removing stone from over the lions head.  I am working over my head to do this and my arm gets worn out so I do as much as I can then go grind on a leg for a while.

more areas to be removed.

The lion is starting to come out..

The great thing about crayon is if I don't like it I can sand it off and try again.

More refined but it's got a ways to go.....