Animal Inspiration

So I have been wanting to explore some animal themed artwork and I had 3 circle canvases waiting for me to decide what to paint. A student in one of my adult art classes has started a painting copying the lovely style of Leonid Afremov - I have included some examples of his work below -

This got me thinking about colour and backgrounds and how I could approach my paintings of animals in a very different way. I painted a colourful background with no distinguishing features on two of the canvases and once dry, have started to paint a lions head. This is the result so far

I am happy with how it's going so far but it is early days yet.

The third canvas however went in another direction. I found a beautiful photo of a panda in water and wanted to reproduce it as a painting, let me know what you think.