Wild Things Artwork
by Patsy Lindamood

15"H x 24"W Colored Pencil and Water Soluble Wax Pastel on Ampersand Pastelbord. This piece has been juried into several exhibitions, including the UK Coloured Pencil Society's 7th Annual International Open Exhibition at the Royal West of England Gallery, Clifton, Bristol, Great Britain, and most recently the Red River Valley International Juried Art Exhibition 2009, Red River Valley Museum, Vernon, TX, where it was given a Judge's Award of Merit.

This was my second attempt to work on the Ampersand Pastelbord in colored pencil media. I struggled with the work to get the pencil and the Neocolor II crayons to do what I wanted them to do. I will be honest in that the final result did not quite meet my expectations for the work, yet I still managed to execute a painting that is strong enough to have been juried into several exhibitions and to take a couple of awards.

The composition in this piece is one of its strengths. John Seerey-Lester taught me some things about composition that I might have taken years to discover on my own. I purposely placed the racoon's head up into the right hand corner to increase the illusion of the racoon's crouch in the water. My subject was photographed at Triple D Game Farm, Kalispell, MT. The markings on these guys, and the way they scramble through fields and up trees just cracks me up. I love to spot them when we are out camping, but I can never seem to catch them in camp when I have enough light to shoot them. I have great references from Triple D, however, and I plan to do more works featuring them. I am almost certain, though, that the next racoon painting will be done in pastel!