Edit: Wow, a DD! Thank you!

Thank you everyone for your comments and favorites aswell!
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Please full view.
Close up : [link]First off this did indeed take me an embarrassingly huge amount of time. Definitely over 50-60 hours in the least.. It is also my first full digital illustration. I had this urge to make an image that is more dynamic and detailed after having been stuck making pinups for several months. I decided to color this digitally because 1. I want to learn how to do it properly, 2. traditional rarely prints as nice as digital in my experience.
This is my Rare 2011 calendar submission. My beast was the prehistoric short faced bear. I decided to make him battling a north American cave lion, the second largest carnivore (ok, the bear might have been an omnivore-but some studies suggest it might have been more carnivorous) of that time period after the short faced bear. The lion seems to have stumbled in the bear's territory--uh oh.
I chose to give the bear a more toned build since the short faced bear had longer limbs. The real short faced bear stood over 11 feet tall when standing upright and over 5 ft at the shoulder when on all fours.. Badass carnivore right there

–so I had to adorn him with dire wolf skulls, pelts, and sabertooth claws and fangs. His markings are spectacle bear inspired, since it is it's closest living relative. The background is intentionally painterly in order to put the beasts in focus.
I learned a lot from this piece for sure-there are many things id like to go back and fix but I gotta move on to the next project!
BUY THE CALENDAR HERE
[link]
Esp the fur textures!