This piece was done on commission for the lovely Digital Artist Magazine who gave me the opportunity to write an article for the magazine detailing my process. The editor was simply outstanding and really welcoming of my ideas. And by heck I learned a lot myself doing this!

This was an idea that had been bobbling about in my head for a long time, though it's various forms all vague and nebulous until this opportunity presented itself. I truly hope someone walks away from the article learning something or even moreso..feeling inspired to create something!

The idea is inspired, in part, by imagery of a town in the Namib desert called Kolmanskop that is slowly being devoured by the surrounding desert. For me it presents an eerie and unsettling feeling because I am so used to seeing more ancient looking buildings in such scenarios, but the buildings in the town are fairly modern thus leading to the haunting feeling. The second idea is images I have come across to what is, at least from the reading I have found, a new subspecies of cheetah that is thought to live in the Sahara desert (The Saharan cheetah). Images of the elusive cat are sparse and most are blurry grayscale captures by a night camera depicting a thin long legged cat that looks almost like a ghostlike apparition. So in the end the two inspirations joined together to form the above imagery. The cheetah is not quite thin enough to be a Saharan cheetah, and it's spots are too pronounced..but I sprinkled a little bit of personal fantasy into the mix.

I hope you folks enjoy it as much as I enjoyed painting it! There is a sister piece I am hoping to do that will accompany this image C=.

If you want to read the article, it is in issue 33 of Digital Artist Magazine, the May issue in the UK and I believe it is released a month later here in the US. Included with the article are the brushes I used C:. You can find the magazine at: Digital Artist Magazine Website. The magazine also features fantastic articles from other artists you may be familiar with, specifically :iconVantid: with her fanciful corel painter brushwork!

Also ps, the image title is actually inspired by the title of an episode of Cosmos, which may have been inspired by the Dali painting (I couldn't say!)

**tools:** Photoshop and Wacom Intuos 3  
**Size:**5500x3600 at 300 dpi  
**Refs:** http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriahughes/4534087986/ cheetah pose , courtesy of **Victoria Hughes of Deadwood Digital**. Many many photos for the enigmatic Kolmanskop, sand and everything else in the image.

~

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