Bear Portrait: Jurka

This is the second in my series of brown bear portraits from the Black Forest bear sanctuary. So let me introduce to you Jurka, female brown bear, now 24 years of age, and originally from the wild in Slovenia. She was captured and resettled in northern Italy to help restore a population of wild brown bears to the Trentino, in the course of which she became the mother of (among others) Bruno - himself something of a celebrity in Germany due to his own sad story: Baited by a hotel owner and shown off as a photo attraction for tourists, both the mother bear and her cub lost their natural fear of humans and started to invade settlements in search for more easy-to-get food. Guess what: In no time at all, the wild bears, in the eyes of both administration and public, had turned from beloved tourist magnets into so-called 'risky bears' and, thus, a problem to be solved. After crossing the border to Germany, Bruno - the first wild brown bear to return to Germany after 150 years - was shot on the 26th of June 2006. Jurka was captured alive and, after being kept in a small bear pit for some time, found a new home in the newly established Black Forest bear sanctuary in 2010.

It still goes to show that Jurka is, at heart, a true 'wild' bear who has roamed vast spaces of wilderness while she was still free. Being held captive in a limited space must, literally, have been nothing short of torture to her, and we fear that even in an environment as generous as the bear sanctuary she might still feel trapped. On the other hand, she seems to cope well enough now. She knows all the tricks of how to hide and survive in the forest (no matter how small the area, when she doesn't want to be seen, then you simply do not see her), and she is extremely clever (still, at times, climbing trees when she wants to have a good view of her surroundings, and fabricating tools from sticks trying to short out an electric fence once in order to get at a beehive nearby).

I've always felt the deepest respect towards this very formidable, very capable bear lady. Even more so when she looks up at me with this stern, forbidding look of hers. It's this look that I've tried to  capture in my portrait sketch. I'm not entirely satisfied with my linework here, which has not turned out as fluid as I'd have liked it to be. However, part of the challenge/practice consists of finishing each piece in one session, so I decided to leave this one in its 'rough' state.
In a way, it befits the model. And the look, in fact, is very much how I see Jurka who stands for everything a bear should be allowed to be.


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The bear sanctuary's official name is the "Alternativer Wolf- und Bärenpark Schwarzwald" ("Alternative Wolf and Bear Park Black Forest") and it's located in Bad Rippoldsau-Schapbach near Freudenstadt, Germany. It's an animal-welfare project that belongs to the German Foundation for Bears.
Please do visit...

• ... their website: www.baer.de
• ... their facebook pages: www.facebook.com/WOLF.und.BAERENPARK.SCHWARZWALD
• ... their location: Alternativer Wolf- und Bärenpark Schwarzwald, Rippoldsauer Strasse 36/1, D-77776 Bad Rippoldsau-Schapbach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany