FOXY FINDS THURSDAY

O.K., I know I am a day early, but I wanted to dedicate a whole post to the promised final peak at our mantelpiece where some of our fox treasures live.

Oh, and more cow bells too...

I wanted to take a moment to tell you about the Fox print hanging in the top right of this picture (my photo does not do it any justice). This is a Fox Portrait done by the superbly talented, singularly unique, dog obsessed and truly witty, Anna Dibble. I will say right off the bat that Anna is a great friend of ours, and her work under the title DibbleDog is extremely well known in this area of Southern Vermont.

"Juno, Muggs & Lester", Painting

"Cocktail Party 2", Oil on Birch

Anna is an illustrator/artist/cartoonist who has worked for the likes of Marvel, Hanna Barbera, Disney and Sesame Street prior to starting her own business. She currently specialises in prints, cards and paintings featuring Dogs. What makes this Fox cartoon/portait so unique is that it was done using a technique that Anna no longer uses, so I asked her to tell me more about it.

"The Fox was part of a long series - started in the 70s - of pen and ink animal portraits. I started with a pencil drawing, using a photograph for very general reference, on good quality water color paper, then went in with a pen. That piece was probably drawn with a Rapidograph pen, a pen I used a lot back then. They'd often get clogged, and you'd have to take the pen apart, run water through the tip, put it back together and shake it until the ink flowed again. After inking, I painted it with water color washes,leaving some of the white of the raw paper."

There is a lot of cross hatching in this drawing and Anna sites 19th Century children's illustrator, E.H. Shepard (most famous for illustrating Winnie The Pooh and The Wind In The Willows) as one major protagonist of this technique.

Apologies for not being able to get a great image of this Fox Portrait so that you can really get a sense of the detailed technique Anna used, and just how fabulously regal this fox is. He is so alert, like he is holding still waiting for the artist to finish his portrait!

So more Foxy Finds tomorrow...lucky you! In the meantime, check out Anna's work. If you love dogs, you are sure to love the wit and character she puts into these images, giving them human personas. As we all know, dogs really are human!