Tavern Artist by Lionus (2002)

"And in a corner of the tavern, off to the side, a seated lion was sketching on a large pad raised up on one knee."

I was doing a little e-mailing with a furry author who had sent me a short story to read. In it the story's main character (a lion) had a job that suggested that he worked in or around a tavern. It had nothing to do with the story beyond providing a little background for the lion character. I mentioned to the author that he might, however, base his next story in that tavern and verbally sketched out what it might look like. In my very brief verbal description I wrote the line that is under the picture above.

Now let me say that I can not write worth a spent penny. Oh, I can have a little fun verbally sketching out a single scene, but linking a number of them together into a coherent story is beyond me. To paraphrase Star Trek's Doctor Mc Coy, "Damn it, Jim, I'm an artist, not a writer!" :)
Be that as it may, I have an unexplanable fondness for tavern scenes, be they written or on the screen. Most probably in a previous life something significant happened to me in one of them. Tallyhawk suggested that since Ancient Rome had taverns, one of them probably led to me to meeting my first lion. Hopefully it was in the happy fashion of "Androcles and the Lion" (George Bernard Shaw). *wink*

In any case, the mental snapshot that I had of that artist lion in the tavern stuck with me until I committed him to paper seen here.

A pencil drawing touched up in PhotoShop.