Since my hectic schedule just doesn’t seem to allow much time for daily WHOLE paintings, perhaps I can appease you all by posting what painting I did get to do that day. 
Today is a WIP of a new piece I started the other night….yeah, I know, another new piece, when I have other pieces to finish yet, but hey, it’s been a rough week for me - the winter blues have really taken a big bite out of me so I have to fight back with something new and exciting so that I can get myself back on that art horse, as it were.
This one measures about 16″ x 28″, give or take…I haven’t decided how much I’ll crop it down to yet, we’ll see what I decide as I get closer to finishing it. It’s pastels on suede, of course, my favorite medium to work in and after spending some frustrating time working on my large acrylic painting, which is viewable on my other blog - Phases of My Mood - which is quite obviously not my best medium yet, but I will conquer and master it. It does lend itself a lot better to working large - very large - compared to pastels which would be cumbersome to frame and ship at such large dimensions. So, if I’m to continue offering large works of art for you, I will have to keep at those acrylics until I’ve become as comfy with them as I am with pastels.
But, back to the piece at hand. 
This piece is being worked out of one of my many photos taken during my trip to Yellowstone back in October for the Robert Bateman seminar. On the way home we stopped in at a wolf/bear park in West Yellowstone and you just know I spent darned near the entire time captivated by the wolves. This fellow (I think it’s a fellow, can’t see his/her back half in the photo and the whole pack is fairly similarly colored) was trotting by my camera and I chose this particular photo because of the colorful scenery behind him. Yes, me, liking SCENERY! Imagine that! With all the plein air pieces I’ve been doing this past year, it’s a natural transition for me to start thinking more of the background that I place my subjects in rather than just being a painting of JUST the animal.
Here is the painting in progress thus far:
Now, you may wonder, why is she painting a picture of a wolf who’s facing away from you? At first I thought, yeah, I know, I should turn his head this way. But then it would just be another one of thousands of “been there, already done that” portrait poses of a wolf. So, I decided, dang it, I’m the artist, I can do whatever I darn well please, and I love the colors in this wolf’s neck, so I’m leaving him facing the other way on purpose. What’s he looking at? Or is he just oblivious to your presence? Or are you oblivious to his? Wolves in the wild are oft romanticized by those who revere them and ostracized by those who don’t. Yet the wolf is an important part of the “circle of life”, keeping the populations in balance with each other. Remove the predator and now we’re overrun with prey animals. I’m fortunate in that there are still a few wild wolves left not far from where I live, and having gotten to know wolves quite well in the past year during my studies, I must say that I side with the wolf. A few small losses in livestock is a small price to pay in order to keep nature in balance. Without nature, nothing lives in the long run. We need our environment to stay intact the way it was meant to function. I’d rather be short a few head of cattle in the relative short term than have them vanish altogether in the long term. (I could go on and on into a rant about this, but I won’t. Suffice to say, all businesses have losses for various reasons - the weather, the economy, damaged goods, whatever….ranching has it’s losses too and as long as it can be a tax write-off, why is everybody whining???)
Anyhoo!
I haven’t settled on a title yet for this piece. We’ll see how he evolves as I progress on it.
