It’s a cold winter night between eleven and fifteen thousand years ago on the plains of North America. One of the earliest ancestors of the Native Americans is so absorbed in gathering sticky liquid asphalt for use as glue that he doesn’t notice the hungry Smilodon fatalis stalking him to his right.
At least our human protagonist might be able to escape this one if he’s able to kick or shove the saber-toothed cat into the asphalt pit (or “tar pit” as they’re commonly misnamed).
This is a scene that underwent a lot of revision from its initial conception. It started off being set in the Los Angeles area of California, with the asphalt pit representing its infamous La Brea pits, but then I decided I wanted a more iconic “ice age” environment with lots of snow along with woolly mammoths together with the bison and sabertooth. This is why I moved the scene to somewhere in the northern Great Plains, possibly near the rich petroleum reserves of central Canada. The third, digital draft of the work required me to change the Native man’s costume and his encampment to look somewhat less like a stereotypical 19th century Plains Native sleeping in a tipi (apparently tipis were only introduced in the Americas after Columbus).
Overall, I think the work has improved a lot over its transition from pencil draft to digital reworking.