The Friends of the Library book sale is such a great place to get art books. I love leafing through art books for inspiration, especially renaissance era paintings lately. I came across the image below and it just stopped me... I couldn't take my eyes off it, and kept coming back to it over and over again. So I drew it, and then drew a few variations of it as well.
The painting is called "Man With A Golden Paw," by Lorenzo Lotto, from around 1527. Maybe it's the Princess Leia hairdo? That weird tiny paw in his big sausage-fingered hand? But I think it's the expression, and some kind of gravitas somehow that got me.
Mysterious.
And so I started thinking about mysterious creatures in my neighborhood, which naturally led me to the mysterious fisher cat.
I've seen one - I think - once in our yard, loping along in the semi-twilight. I definitely saw one in a tree this year, whizzing along the freeway of all places. Basically, they are big weasels, not quite wolverines.
They don't seem to receive much painterly love, if you go looking on the internet. All the cute fauna like bunnies and deer, or pop culture "it" critters like possums get all the attention. So I figured it was high time to spend some time with the fisher.