I spent a couple of blissful afternoons this week sketching wolves up close at the Wolf Conservation Center (WCC) in South Salem, NY. The center is home to four ambassador wolves who educate the public about wolves, and to red wolves and Mexican gray wolves– both critically endangered species. The WCC participates in the Species Survival Plan (SSP) and is involved in the captive breeding and release programs for these endangered wolf species. Because some of the red wolves and Mexican gray wolves may potentially be released into the wild someday, they have a minimum of exposure to people, and I haven’t seen or sketched them.
The ambassador wolves are gray wolves. Atka, the oldest at 14 years old, is an Arctic gray wolf. The other three are Canadian/Rocky Mountain gray wolves. Alawa and Zephyr are five and a half year old littermates. Nikai, their younger brother, is two and a half. Atka lives by himself in his own very large enclosure, and the other three live together next door to him. Today I especially enjoyed observing some of the dynamics between Alawa, Zephyr, and Nikai, and I took notes and did some sketches showing just tail carriage. One of my longer term goals is to learn more about wolf dynamics and body language by watching these three younger wolves.
One thing I’m interested in seeing is how my sketches change and (hopefully) improve as I keep going back and sketching. I haven’t been very experienced with wolf sketching, and their proportions are a bit different than dogs, so I have some learning to do (which is always a good thing!).
Here is a sampling of my sketches from yesterday, some fairly quick, some a bit more detailed when the wolves were still for longer:
Below are some of my sketches from today. I started out with graphite pencil (usually my medium of choice), but after a while it started to rain, and graphite doesn’t work on wet paper, so I switched to an indigo watercolor pencil, which was very happy with the large raindrops on my paper. I also tried capturing some wolves running– a challenge, but fun to work at.
