Here are 3 illustrations  for Canadian Wildlife Magazine’s article on urban wildlife: A cougar considers his mounted cousin at the tea house / A man surrenders this balcony to the racoons / Montreal’s pigeon man’s love for the flying rodents is almost saintly. Always great to be art directed by Steven Balaban and do some fun animal pieces for Canadian Wildlife Magazine.

The illustration below always makes my day since I persuaded my husband Jamie to model for me. How can I not laugh at the image of him being attacked by racoons and squirrels? These are the harsh situations one must face living in Canada.

Pigeons often have a bad rap but this fella is trying to change that.

Here’s one of the spreads from the orginal article designed by Steven Balaban.

Here are the other two awarded illustrations, Woodpecker Guardian & Divine Woodpecker from Angels on Earth Magazine art directed by the lovely Olga Jakim. This article focused on a granddaughter’s story of her deceased grandfather’s love for the woodpeckers who he believed watched over him. If anyone is interested, these fine winged fellows are available in my shop as prints.

There’s a bunch of good work featured in the magazine, so go and pick it up now. To keep with the animal theme of this post, one of my favourite illustrations from the annual is from the talented Dushan Milic. What an amazing piece!

Thanks Applied Arts!

In honor of Earth Day, AOL will be donating $1 to the Nature Conservancy for any user who joins their Twibbon campaign. If you use one of my canvases as a ‘Twibbon” to your Twitter or Facebook page, $1 will be donated to The Nature Conservancy. What a great idea!

One of my illustrations features the critically endangered Amur Leopard which used to live in Korea, China and Russia but now only finds its home in the remote and snowy northern forests of eastern Russia’s Primorye region. With a population of just 30-35 individuals, threats facing the species include habitat loss due to logging, poaching, global climate change and an encroaching human population. The Amur Leopard is one of the most, if not the most, endangered large cats on earth. I wanted to paint this beautiful creature glancing warily behind foliage; isolated and seemingly melding into the background, disappearing from our memory.

Here’s some process shots of this piece. Here’s the acrylic paint before I added the ink lines.

With my other illustrations I wanted to depict a range of our planet’s unique environments and climates. I wanted to not only focus on the problems facing the planet but also depict a small window into landscapes that celebrate its vast diversity. With these images I focused on wind, plant-life, air, streams, earth and the ocean, all painted within a globe composition.

One particular environment that is endlessly fascinating to me is the Ocean. I grew up in a house looking out on the Persian Gulf and since moving inland to Canada as a teenager, I’ve felt sadly distanced from the sea. I find the immense scale of the Earth’s oceans and seas incredibly awe-inspiring and overwhelming. Recently the Census of Marine Life (COML) project took on a massive 10 year international effort to assess the diversity and abundance of marine life. The Census estimated there to be over 1 million species in the ocean, with three quarters still awaiting discovery. I can’t even fathom the scale of this. To think there is so much to be discovered on this planet still is truly amazing.

I was so happy to get four pieces chosen by AOL but I also painted a few more images inspired by the Earth Day theme. Here’s a few more critically endangered animals and some sketches.

WESTERN LOWLAND GORILLA
There are two lowland gorillas native to West Africa: the western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), which is the most numerous of the four gorilla subspecies, with over 90,000 individuals in the wild, and the Cross River gorilla (Gorilla diehli), of which only a tiny population of a few hundred remains. Both are listed by the IUCN as Critically Endangered because of the fact that their populations have declined by over 60 percent during the past 25 years—and are projected to continue dropping over the coming decades. Causes for the increasing scarcity include habitat loss and illegal commercial hunting by poachers, who sell gorillas for food in West African markets. But the largest killer of gorillas has been a deadly illness—the incurable ebola virus—which has ended the lives of up to 90 percent of these great apes in some forest areas. More Information on IUCN red list

Here’s a process shot of the gorilla. I was really happy with how this piece turned out.

You can find this gorilla and my crane piece as prints now on my Etsy shop.

THE SIBERIAN CRANE
Siberian Cranes have two breeding populations in the Arctic tundra of western and eastern Russia. They eastern populations migrate during winter to China while the western population winters in Iran and formerly, in India. Among the cranes, they make the longest distance migrations. Their populations, particularly those in the western range have declined drastically in the 20th century due to hunting along their migration routes and habitat degradation. The world population was estimated in 2010 at about 3200 birds, mostly belonging to the eastern population with about 95% of them wintering in the Poyang lake basin in China, a habitat that may be altered by the Three Gorges Dam. More information at IUCN Red List.

THE GAUR
The gaur, also called Indian bison, is a large bovine native to South Asia and Southeast Asia. The species is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1986 as the population decline in parts of the species’ range is likely to be well over 70% over the last three generations. Population trends are stable in well-protected areas, and are rebuilding in a few areas which had been neglected. This image was adapted from a larger piece I painted for an exhibition, see original here.

Thanks again to AOL Artists! I’m really thrilled to be a part of this.

Sadly the magnificent Western Lowland Gorilla is now critically endangered due to exceptionally high levels of hunting and disease-induced mortality from the Ebola Virus, which combined are estimated to have caused its abundance to decline by more than 60% alone over the last 20 to 25 years. For more information go to the IUCN Red list.

Find more information about the prints on my Etsy shop.

The long-lived Siberian crane qualifies as critically endangered owing to fears that its global population will decline extremely rapidly over the next three generations following the development of the Three Gorges Dam in China which threatens the wintering grounds used by the vast majority of individuals. For more information please go to the IUCN Red List.