Iberian Wolf

I sketched this funny looking guy at the Natural History Museum here in Rome. In reality he's fierce-looking, but he came out as a sort of cartoon. I used one of my favourite pencils, a soft black oil base Faber-Castell. So smooth and so rich in colour.

The Iberian wolf, Canis lupus signatus, is a subspecies of the Eurasian wolf, and gets its name from the dark marks - signatus - on his tail and front legs. Can you see them?

Once considered a pest and brought close to extinction through years of persecution, it's now recovering. The loberos, wolf hunters, don't enjoy as much respect as they used to and their traps are now illegal, although hunting is, sadly, still permitted in most of Spain.