When I started on my rabbit and cat jewelry dish sculptures back in October of last year I was throwing ideas around with my husband, Dave, about what else I could sculpt and discovered that he loves foxes. Specifically, nine tailed foxes popular in Japanese mythology.
I am also a big fan of nine-tailed foxes, ala Ninetails from pokemon. So, I figured that I would do a nine-tailed fox sculpture for him for Valentine’s day.
A lot of artists talk about having a muse, and Dave is mine. His gleeful smile when I show him something I’m working on is probably the inspiration behind half of what I do.
The line between the pursuit of self-improvement and pursuit of impossible perfection is very thin, and it seems artists are especially prone to not knowing which side of the line they are on. Dave keeps me on the right side of the line, and from going crazy haha.
Knowing that I have someone in my corner, pushing me when I need a push, believing in me when I don’t feel especially confident, is everything. That’s not to say that my friends and family aren’t a great support system; they are. But Dave is my special person, and he fills my heart with joy. Making things for him is a way for me to try and show him how much I appreciate him. Anyways, I am a mushy romantic and I digress.
My husband likes nine tailed foxes, so I set about researching foxes.
I pulled inspiration from the aforementioned pokemon, Ninetails, as well as a wide variety of fox pictures I found with a quick google image search. Probably most influential was the fennec fox, which is a super cute fox with big giant ears.
Usually, that’s as far as it goes for my sculpture prep work – I just do a sketch to get an idea of how I need to build my armature. But, I kind of liked how the sketch was looking and figured I should gussy it up a bit. Then, I thought it would be really cute as a Valentine’s Day card. So, I wrote a little message on it, colored it up with some markers and now it’s going to be a little card that goes with his sculpture.
If you’d like to commission some art for your Valentine, hop on over to the Bespoke page and shoot me a message. I’d love to help bring your creative ideas to life!
Be sure to check back next Friday for a look at the nine tailed fox sculpture that I created based on this drawing.
