The Unlikely Friends: My art of the fox and the hare

As artists we are allowed to create the type of world we wish in our work. When I work with animal subjects, which I often do, I take liberty. After losing two hens to a fox the other day, I thought I am making a fox happily sharing the world with one of his normal prey, in this case a rabbit.

I give you, The Unlikely Friends:

I even played with scale a bit and made the rabbit a bit on the large size, to sort of hold his own in this world of predator and prey as friend.

As usual, I start with a very rough sketch, this time focusing on the two subjects more so then their surroundings.

Although the final piece is not done in watercolor, I like to sometimes play with it a bit on the sketch to sort of get the feel of my colors.

Then, however, I erase all that and go to ink. This was when I realized I wanted a rather stylized background, just picking up the hint of a field of flowers with various lines.

Then I made the background base with broad strokes of cool color to recede with some bits of warm pinks I could then highlight after I finished the subjects up.

I like to use the approach I use in my more fine art paintings but with the use of ink lines you definitely have a more illustrative style. I enjoy both types of final pieces, so I really let the movement of the strokes dictate if I am going to go full tilt fine art impressionistic brushwork, or use it (as I did here) as the play of color to be filled into an inked outline.

Well, I hope your day is filled with the potential for unlikely friendships, or at the very least full of flower filled meadows.

If you do like my work , I do sell it both at prints, and also on things here