A Mother's Love

Ok, the photo of this is so incredably bad that I nearly want to cry. And if its imaginable, the scan was even worse.
I spent over 20 hrs painting every individual hair, and minute details on everything else, and you can't even tell... *sigh* I almost want to say don't full veiw, cause then you can just see every odd reflection and blur better.

anyways, this is my entry for =Lyanti's contest.
The theme was 'what is love'. Apparently, we both seem to have the same idea of what love is... she put it well, saying ' Love is selflessness and sacrifice, placing others before oneself.' Since we also seem to think first of the same example of love- Jesus Christ's death on the cross, I kinda figured it'd be cheating if I drew that...

So I came up with this instead. I was randomly working on a sketchy doodle of my escaped slave gardener character 'Mint', when the idea popped into my head. Its a scene at some sort of slave working place, at sunset, after a hard days labour. The pup, being quite exhausted, seems to have made some sort of mistake, punishable by a possibly fatal beating. His mother was near by, and has pleaded with the slave master to take the punishment instead of her young son. The slave master seems to be thinking it over, whip in hand.

Oh, and I'm not entirly sure what species they are... I think I'm gonna go with the mom being a wolf/coyote cross, and her unseen mate being a wolf, which explains the pups wolfish appearance. (The guy up top was supposed to be some sort of jackal-ish dog)

Acrylics on Illistration board
Time taken: 20+ hours *faints*