I worked on this in little bursts for a couple or three weeks, about an hour a day, so perhaps 20 hours total? This was practice and experimenting with brushes, using bristley artist oils, real bristle brush and some oil brushes I haven't really gotten the handle of yet, trying to achieve a cohesive finished product. I'm rather pleased with the finished work, and it was an interesting experience.

I have to admit I should have spent more time considering the composition. And the file size/ratio etc...ah, well...

There is a ref photo for the tiger in the scraps of my DA account, where you can see I've skewed the proportions of the snout unfortunately...no ref for the background, just playing around with atmosphere for fun.

 Welcome to the garden, it's nap time. Claim a bit of ground and sleep out the heat of the day, there's going to be a feast in the cool of the evening.