I recently started a new series for a bit of fun, 'Lesser Known Wild Cat Species'.
Here's the finished pic, so let's go through a little of the process.
I doodled about ten different ideas to suit the theme. Here is one of the pages from my notebook. I did the doodling while on the morning commute. There's a couple of other idea on the page, but the Lynx stood out, so I decided to go with that one.
I did a tracing of the above doodle to use as a guide and then ended up with the chap above.
I went for a backdrop of a forest at night. The background was originally a lot ligher, but I darkened the tones to both the Lynx stand out more and also to convey the night setting.