Conservation Painting 2021

 Hey All! Is anyone still reading this? I thought I'd go ahead and update with some work I did this year.

First up, more painting in support of conservation initiatives! In previous years I've done a number of paintings for various conservation related charity auctions. With last year being (hopefully) peak pandemic, all the usual events I do artwork for were either cancelled, or had their format tweaked to a virtual environment.

World Giraffe Day 2021

It was nice this year when my first post-vaccinated gathering was the annual 'Laughs for Giraffes' event in celebration/support of World Giraffe Day in June - this year hosted by the Global Conservation Force. I was asked if I would be willing to create something, which I happily agreed to, and came up with this:

 What was fun about this one was how serendipitously it came about. I was actually planning something completely different but while experimenting with different compositions and doing a bunch of sketching of Giraffes, I ended up jotting down this pose which really resonated with me, so I designed the image around it:

And here's the final framed print that sold at the silent auction:

World Rhino Day 2021

While the annual Bowling for Rhinos event didn't happen this year, I decided to do a drawing to post across all my social media platforms to raise awareness for World Rhino Day on Sep 22, 2021:

No that's not just a poorly drawn rhino, these are the actual proportions of the stout extinct American rhino, Teleoceras, made famous by the Ashfall Fossil Beds in Nebraska. As content as this animal looks, it has no idea an eruption from the Yellowstone volcano ~700 miles away is soon going to 'Pompei' its entire herd. While these guys were wiped out before humanity even existed, humans are directly causing the rapid decline of all 5 rhino species still alive today. 

And that's what I have for this year. I've been thinking a lot lately about how to take these sorts of projects further, and put my skills to good use to do more science communication on a variety of important topics. While animals like rhinos and giraffes certainly need our help there are a lot of more obscure animals, and indeed entire interconnected ecosystems that deserve awareness and better PR campaigns as well. After all, a wild rhino population isn't going to survive if the rest of its ecosystem isn't in tact....

That's all for now. I hope to have more on this topic soon.

-Evan 

Inktober 2020

 With all the extra time at home I thought it was a good year to try participating in Inktober, where you create and share an ink drawing based on a list of prompts for each day during the month of October.

I successfully completed all the prompts, although there were a few days where I got behind and had to do multiple drawing to catch up, especially once we started raising a new dog. This was a great experience to force me to just push stuff out. Any artist goes through the mental games of not wanting to release something to the world unless they're extremely happy with it it, especially when there are so many better artists in one's social network.

 With this challenge I tried to embrace the idea that it doesn't matter if a single drawing didn't turn out great because there's a new one tomorrow. It was nice to get back to sketching and not obsessing over details and erasing and redrawing every line over and over again (which is easy to get stuck doing when working digitally). I tried my best to embrace the medium - smudges, imperfections, and all.

 I also didn't want to spend too much time on any individual drawing, and was forcing myself to commit to ideas. I didn't do any pencil under-drawings... so you can see all my mistakes on the page. For some drawings I thumbnailed a bit to plan compositions or character designs, and for a few drawings I screwed up at the end in a way that I couldn't let go and completely redrew them. There are plenty of issues I've noticed after the fact and if I was working digitally would more easily be able to refine things like cluttered compositions, messy silhouettes, or bad perspective, but I was trying to let go of all that and just enjoy the process of drawing. Some definitely turned out better than others. Also of note, there's no fancy techniques or tools here. Just a normal ballpoint pen on a sketchpad.

Anyway, I wanted to post them all in one spot for ease of access, so here you are. It was a good experience and I think I'll try to do it again next year. (Click any image to enlarge it)

Prompt 1: Fish

Prompt 2: Wisp

Prompt 3: Bulky

Prompt 4: Radio

Prompt 5: Blade

Prompt 6: Rodent

Prompt 7: Fancy

Prompt 8: Teeth

Prompt 9: Throw

Prompt 10: Hope

Prompt 11: Disgusting

Prompt 12: Slippery

Prompt 13: Dune

Prompt 14: Armor

Prompt 15: Outpost

Prompt 16: Rocket

Prompt 17: Storm

Prompt 18: Trap

Prompt 19: Dizzy

Prompt 20: Coral

Prompt 21: Sleep

Prompt 22: Chef

Prompt 23: Rip

Prompt 24: Dig

Prompt 25: Buddy

Prompt 26: Hide

Prompt 27: Music

Prompt 28: Float

Prompt 29: Shoes

Prompt 30: Ominous

Prompt 31: Crawl

Jack-O-Lanterns: IRL 2020

 Happy Halloween Everyone! That means it's time for a "Jack-O-Lanterns In Real Life" post! This year COVID didn't stop people from carving Jack-O-Lanterns - in fact, we had more people submit carvings of my designs than ever before this year!

First up my friend and Giraffe-Keeper Extraordinaire, Mike Bona decided to go with my rhino design from 2018:

I think he absolutely nailed it. Fantastic job! Here's the original for your convenience:

Then we had Nicole DiGiambattista's carving from a design from 2015:

Another incredible job! Here's the original design:

And last but not least, we have Bonnie Garcia's carving of a design from the first ever lineup from 2010:

Aaaaaand here's the original:

Thanks for playing everyone! It makes me happy to see more and more people put these doodles to good use every year! Happy Halloween everyone!!! Looking forward to what everyone comes up with next year!

For Previous Jack-O-Lanterns IRL, see:

2019
2012
2013
2015
2017 - (I forgot to post them that year but they are at the bottom of the 2018 design post) 

-Evan

A Woolly Rhino for Conservation

 Another May, Another Bowling for Rhinos! After the success of last year, the kind folks at the Los Angeles Zoo asked me if I would do another painting for them to use in their silent auction. I was thrilled to do so. I wanted to come up with something thematically similar to what I did last year, with the idea that over time these rhino portraits might make a good series. Here's what I came up with:

 

Portrait of Poruchik Anatoli Volosatyy (click to enlarge)

'Portrait of Poruchik Anatoli Volosatyy'

Original Digital Painting, 2017.

Poruchik Volosatyy was one of the last of a long line of defenders of the Mammoth Steppe in western Siberia. He was a bit of a lone wolf, and disappeared some 10,000 years ago. It is unclear what happened to him, but it is thought he died in a skirmish - defending his grazing lands from the bipedal invaders often seen roaming around at that time.

As with last year's portrait of Mr. Eustace Simum, I wanted to do a piece that would look nice on the wall of whoever purchased it while also trying to highlight some conservation issues. I liked the idea of doing an extinct rhino species in order to subtly highlight that rhinos have gone extinct before, and it is likely to happen again. I also liked the idea of doing an extinct woolly rhino in the form of an old portrait, like you might find of a distant relative on a wall in your grandparent's house. I originally wanted to make it look like an old Civil War photograph, but I realized that Woolly Rhinos never made it across the Bering Strait to the US. So Instead of mixing the US Civil War with a species that never lived in the Americas, I decided to make him into an old Napoleonic-Era Russian soldier, since remains of woolly rhinos are often found in that region of the world.

After doing some research on the life appearance of the woolly rhino, and a bit into 18th-19th Century Russian Military equipment (I admit I probably didn't go far enough into this to get something that was truly accurate, but I did at least look at a bunch of things) I did some initial sketches to think this out: 

 

Just kind of thinking out loud here

 I took the first drawing and refined the shape language a bit to get a cleaner silhouette

I tried a few different compositions to see what I liked the best, but ultimately went back to the previous one.

 

...and here's a work in progress of the digital painting process

 

The painting was another success! It sold at the silent auction for a couple hundred dollars, all of which goes to benefit conservation of rhinos and the other animals in their habitat. It was a good time of bowling, drinking, and hanging out and catching up with people who care about conservation. If you are interested in this sort of work, but missed the event, I believe you can still donate to the cause here. And if that link is closed, some other reputable organizations I fully suggest you look into and consider helping are the International Rhino Foundation (who I support regularly through AmazonSmile) and the Global Conservation Force (who had an awesome presence at Bowling for Rhinos this year thanks in part to their partnership with Pacific Plate Brewing Co.) Thanks for tuning in, and I'm already thinking ahead to next year!

-Evan