Wolf Paws For Eva

  click to enlarge

On March 1st of this year, Eva posted a beautiful poem titled “wolf summer”.    Much of her poetry stimulates strong visuals in my mind’s eye.  Sometimes she encourages me to try to illustrate what I see. I struggled with this and set it aside. Everytime I tried to draw wolf paws, they did not satisfy me.  The other day, I felt a need to do something wildly creative and had read a post on Creativity Journey where Myrna used an eyedropper and ink to draw her image. I had already drawn many “Lucy” paws and elongated them until I felt they looked like wolf paws.  I could not find adequate reference materials to feature wolf paws only how their legs might look while running, so my composition was designed using Lucy paws in all sorts of running/moving positions.

The above drawing was done with an eyedropper, but I did not blot my lines with a tissue as Myrna’s post described. I drew very quickly so the ink would still be wet and spritzed the surface of the paper so the ink bled irregularly from the marks. My hopes were to create the impression of dirt being churned up by the running feet.  I wish I had quickly snapped a picture of the drawing prior to spritzing. I liked the effect the eye dropper drawing created in my line work.  After this dried, I flung frisket across the surface (rather than tapping) to  create white streaks and dots to emulate movement and create texture.

Once the frisket dried, I began painting the washes. It takes some patience and acceptance to work with watercolor and ink. Even though I used waterproof ink, there is still some gray residue that gets lifted into the pigment that tends to gray the image a little.  I always have to do multiple washes to achieve the color I want in these. To finish, I brightened the legs and paws with white gouache and removed the frisket after it dried.

Eva also creates beautiful art!