Pink Coyote - Creature Feature

Pink Coyote, 8x8 inches, acrylic on paper

Speaking of coyotes, here's a pink one.  Despite using a reference photo to draw this, it still came out with that primitive look I'm so enamored of these days.  I must have been in a really devil-may-care mood, to paint it on watercolor paper.  I also omitted to leave a border around it, which is going to make for display problems. 

I like his hungry, slinky look, at once furtive and defiant.  I regularly used to meet coyotes when walking or pedaling along the Santa Cruz River when I lived in Tucson, and always took it as a lucky omen.  Lucky for me, not for them, the poor creatures are losing habitat by the minute to the uncontrolled development ravaging that beautiful, fragile Sonoran desert region.  

Tyger, Tyger - Creature Feature

Tyger, Tyger, 8x8 inches, acrylic on canvas

Another critter.  I really like this guy, he has a spontaneous, primitive quality that I'm always trying for when I paint, but which all too often proves elusive.  Maybe the fact that I painted him in December, whilst half-freezing to death in my drafty workspace, precluded any temptation to overwork the piece.  

It probably also helped that I drew it without use of any reference, except for a quick check on the internet on the shape of the ears:  I thought they were roundish, but could I be sure?  No.  Like many essentially untrained artists, my visual memory sucks.  Maybe that's the secret, to draw from memory/imagination, but I wonder if it would work out so well with animals less familiar than cats; I've lived with cats for many years and sketch them endlessly.   I have no such intimacy with coyotes, say, however much I admire them.  

Whatever the difficulties, I do think working this way is one of the more promising lines of inquiry I've happened on in a long time.  It feels exciting, and that's one feeling I'm always ready to go chasing after.  

Creature Feature - Blue Bear

Blue Bear, 8x8 inches, Acrylic on Canvas

This bear turned out to be a harbinger of more critters to come.  I liked it right away, not least because it's one of those rare pictures that happened quickly and without thinking.  Thinking usually screws things up, I start second-guessing myself and end up overworking the thing.  

I identify with bears:  I hibernate in winter too.  My earliest imaginary friend in childhood was a bear called Rupert.  I've kept a small hoard of bear icons through countless moves in an otherwise tchotchke-free house.  Maybe my subconscious was trying out some sympathetic magic with this picture, hoping that like Mr. Bear, I'd emerge from my cave again in a not-too-distant spring.