Rescue - Illustration Friday

I feel a bit sorry for this little spider but this illustration was inspired by a true story so it was in fact his fate I'm afraid.  Loxie has no tendencies towards mousing or birding, she is not exactly the finely tuned assassin her species is known to be. That said, she does love a spider. She only ever catches them at night though and I often get up in the morning and find spider corpse on the lounge floor as evidence that she has been having some sport in the night.  On this particular night I was woken up by a great commotion 'holy cow, I'm being burgled' I panicked to myself.  But when I turned the light on I saw Lox sitting by the end of the bed with her (now dead) spider. She looked pleased as punch and was evidently wanting to show mummy her handiwork. I don't have any major issue with spiders, being in Australia got me over my fear of them. But I was very grateful to Lox for the good work she did and continues to do rescuing me from the possibility of them scuttling across my bed at night.

Equipment: Pencil, watercolours, Moleskine sketchbook. Trying to use watercolours last night with Alexander wriggling around on my knee was no easy task but this wasn't going to work if I used pens as I wouldn't have been able to colour Lox black without obliterating the spider. I managed to paint this in 5 minute bursts when I was able to put him down before he grizzled and needed picking back up again. Actually, he is kicking around on me now as I attempt to type this post one-handed. It's been a few months since I used watercolour in a Moleskine sketchbook too. I know lots of people complain about the waxy paper and how it takes the paint but I really like it.