My first-ever painting of Wolf!

This picture is the first one of Wolf I ever painted. It is just a little study, acrylic on linen over board, original 8"x 8" (this image is cropped, I even cropped out my signature! OOps!) painted April, 2000.

As noted above, this picture started it's life as a study, specifically for one of my Tarot Card paintings. I knew that Wolf was the male image I wanted for my Tarot deck, but I hadn't drawn or painted him very much before this, so I decided to do this study before tackling anything final. I was thinking of the Moon card (Major Arcana) and how I would portray Wolf within that context. What I wanted to show in the picture was an intensity and power that Wolf has at the Full Moon now that he has come into the "fullness" of his own self: he has affirmed his status as an alpha and has a mate. You the viewer are his mate for the purposes of the picture: he's focusing this intensity on YOU. He is composed and purposeful in a way that he wasn't able to be before, but he's just as passionate and sensual as ever. It's just that now he has a focus for his passion! It's funny, because as I said this was just meant to be a study to work out color and position...but when I got to his face I just got focused on that myself, and on what I wanted to show, that it came out looking as intense as I intended for the final image to!
In working on the Moon within the image, I felt it important to include a bit of indigenous American folklore pertaining to the Moon that I have always liked. Whereas traditional European folklore speaks of a "Man in the Moon", indigenous American folklore, from the Aztecs to the Pueblos, speaks of a rabbit in the Moon. Furthermore the Moon is always female for these people! This just seemed such a strong connection to Wolf that I couldn't resist using it. So I painted a rabbit into the markings on the Moon. But in order that it wouldn't be quite so distracting, I turned her upside down and fuzzed her out quite a bit. If you tilt your head and look at the image, though, you'll see that she's there!
Another funny thing is that I have not yet pursued a bigger more complete picture from this study after all! As I mentioned above it was MEANT to be for one of the Tarot cards (the Moon), but now, well, it stands alone so nicely that I have just let it be! I am working on the deck, but haven't gotten to the Moon card yet as I'm doing the final paintings in order. The Moon card always does have a canid, a dog or wolf on it in traditional tarot symbolism, howling at a Moon above. My deck of course isn't very traditional, and whether I'll have Wolf howling in my rendition of the card or shown more like he is here remains for me to decide yet!