The Inspiration behind this Piece:

The first time I heard a wild wolf howl was while sitting in the dark around a campfire near the confluence of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers in Yellowstone National Park.  It was a deep rich haunting sound – so different from a coyote’s howl.  I have actually seen only a few wolves in the wild- the first ones during other visits to Yellowstone, and again in Alaska’s Denali National Park.  While the wolves prefer it that way, each encounter left an indelible impression.

I chose to create this piece in scratchboard because I wanted to explore the wolf’s rich and varied fur textures and changes of direction, the intense look of the eyes, and the similarities to our own domesticated dogs (who still share 99.9% DNA with their wild cousins).  Scratchboard is a really great medium to explore these subtle differences!