I Bless the Rains

"It's gonna take me a lot
To drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more
Could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the
Things we never had"

I love that song. I've been longing to base a piece on Toto's song "Africa". I think old music is under-appreciated. That was one of the many old hits I grew up listening to from tapes that would play whenever my parents would drive us. If you haven't heard the hip-hop cover of it, don't: it's awful. Back then, and even now, listening to "Africa" makes me think of "The Lion King". This was the other of the two pieces I wanted to make with pastels. Wanting it to be like what I imagine from the song, I wanted a man standing waste-deep in a lake, and I thought of a lion being at his side, as a spirit animal. Majestic creatures, lions. I don't really care about the goofs here. I wanted to capture whatever detail I could.
I did two practice runs to get the concept before making the final draft. I drew with a pencil and then erased those lines to form the man and the spirit lion with my "tools". I used a marker, pencil crayons, and cheap oil pastels. This was drawn on the evening of 26 April, 2014. I was listening to rock music while making this. Getting a shot of this was a pain in the ass. The lighting made it look unlike the actual thing. The drawing took me 55-60 minutes.