acrylic portrait of a wolf dressed in a bubble wrap hoodie and holding a basket of trash

Art Process Behind 'Lotta Wrap Riding Hood' and my wolf painting ideas

Let me walk you through my art process of the 2nd portrait from ‘Don’t Let Them Fool You’ series and how I developed my Wolf Painting ideas.   The wolf is the host and guardian of the forest and not a scary villain from the children story…

So, once I had the idea of painting the wold, I made a few rough notes of whatever comes to my mind:

  • protect wolves
  • stop hunting
  • protect the forest
  • trash in the forest
  • old fridge, sofa etc in the forest
  • too much bubble wrap used
  • red riding hood
 
With all the above ingredients, the idea starts cooking in my head until I am ready to explore it further in my sketchbook. Here is the visual process I went through Enjoy!

Wolf artwork idea to colour

First step, like always was to create a rough idea of what I wanted to do in my sketch book.  From this, it was converted into a Photoshop sketch so I can start playing with colour concepts.

Lotta Wrap Riding Hood rough idea
lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process13
lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process11

Have some fun with reference photos

Now its time to create some reference photos for the artwork and structure them together.  With the concept of trash, I just looked into my recycling bin and created a basket of trash.

For the cloak, I thought bubble wrap would be a great idea (more trash!!!) so grabbed some from the studio (and of course reused ut!) and I convinced my good friend Dyveke to pose!

Last step was to put that altogether on my canvas.  You can really see it taking shape now

lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process1
lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process2
lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process3

Glasses or no glasses??

This is where I had a dilemma.  Originally it looked like glasses were going to be in, but after the first draft ont he canvas, it didnt work for me, so I decided to change direction and remove them.  With the flick of a brush (well, it was a lot more than that), they were gone.

It the last picture, you can see the definition of the eyes coming along nicely.

lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process4
lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process5
lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process7

Adding the final details

This is where I get into the detail, focussing on the texture of the bubble wrap and the fur and of course adding the colour to the basket of trash

lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process8
lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process17
lotta wrap riding hood wolf acrylics process16

And the end result

After all that, this is teh end result, which I am pretty happy about overall!

acrylic portrait of a wolf dressed in a bubble wrap hoodie and holding a basket of trash

Lotta Wrap Riding Hood

Acrylics on wood

40cm x 50 cm - 2022

Don't-Let-Them-Fool-Promo-mugaska-joanna-mugford-poster

‘Don’t let them fool you’ is an art series presenting a collection of animal portraits in response to rapidly growing need for sustainable actions.

Usually I create my art to make others smile. However there’s been an anxiety growing inside me and I needed to get it out. Nothing new… It’s about the health of our planet. So what if soon there won’t be anything to smile about? 

Isn’t nature the basis of everything?

Learn more about the exhibition here: