Tilcayo (COLOR SKETCH) (Patreon)

New members of my beloved order Carnivora don't get described too often, and when they do it seems like it's usually a graduation up from a subspecies-level classification. New cat species are especially rare, but a week ago we got one! (courtesy of a peer-reviewed article in Current Biology) It took whole genome sequencing to tell it apart from other extremely similar tiger cats, but the tilcayo is now the newest-described cat species in the world (Leopardus tilcayo). She lives in the tropical montane forests in the eastern foothills of the Andes and is indifferent to visitors at best.

So I did this color sketch as my contribution to the swelling pool of hastily rendered fan art. I really pushed the line multiply layer to red on this one -- usually I hate merging character layers, which leaves a reddish fringe where the lineart extends past the base colors. But here I'm actually very happy with it and I think this may be more a feature than a bug and I want to play with it more.