As an antithesis on a popular metaphor, I decided to portray the symbol of innocence as a seemingly regular patron of a strip bar. The catch being, wolves are the strippers. While the lamb drags his eyes up the body of the wolf, assuming as a patron he is safe, the wolf sizes him up. In walking into the den he has literally thrown himself to the wolves.
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Starting out with a rough thumbnail drawing, I then map out the full piece on 11"x14" bristol board paper, which over the years I have found to be ideal for heavy oil pastel drawings.
With oil pastel, I mainly look at the piece as a puzzle to be pieced together rather than a layered work to be stacked. Working from the upper right hand corner, I put in the glass bottles that serve as background for our young ram; edging closely to the border of the lamb himself to blend him properly into his environment.
Following many failed attempts I found using a small pocket knife to etch the texture into the wool of the lamb served as the best and most satisfying method. After extensive study of reflections on sunglasses, I finally felt comfortable warping the image of the wolf and the rest of the bar infront. Taking my pocket knife again against the image on the lense, I found it easy to create a pleasing, relatively realistic reflection of light. This method later comes in handy for the bell around the young ram's neck.
Once the most intimidating part of the piece for me is conquered, I move on the hammer out the rest. After figuring out all the textures I'd need, the rest came easily.
Figuring out how to make the cigar look like it was actually burning was my next challenge. After experimenting with various colours, I settled on a burning ember of red at the end and a light drag of curling white to show the cigar in action.
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In conclusion, working on this piece was a challenge in it's self with extensive detail and several texturing techniques that while very new to me and mostly experiemental, proved to be incredibly effective in what I was trying to portray. Overall, the piece proved to be vibrant and expressive regardless of my issues with partial colour blindness due to a childhood surgery.
