"Black Rhinoceros"

The black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) is a critically endangered species. Smaller and more nervous than the white rhinoceros, it is known for its tendency to charge. Its two keratin horns — the main one capable of exceeding fifty centimetres — have led to it being decimated by poaching.

The animal is in movement, one foreleg raised — neither truly in charge, nor truly at rest. That ambiguity is what was sought: a rhinoceros in action, but the action suspended. The pencil work bears down on the mass of the body, the thick skin rendered by interlocking hatching, while the legs and vegetation remain as sketches, to concentrate all the weight on the volume of the body.