Endangered
Break is over, and phase 2 of this project has started! Today's post is going to be a bit longer than my normal because I need to explain several things.
This year I will be doing charcoal drawings on the weekends, and the week days will be oil or pastel paintings. Along with the critically endangered, extinct in the wild, and extinct animals I did last year, I will be adding in the endangered classification as well. I am contemplating expanding the date range for the animals that are extinct so that I can do ones from the 1800's too.
Another thing I have done is started up a Patreon account. With it hopefully I will be able to raise enough that I can frame all of last year's paintings. I hope to do shows not just in Oregon. Because the animals are from around the world, I would love to show them anywhere that will let me.
The Tehuantepec Jackrabbit is a large jackrabbit, and can get to be almost 9 pounds! Although the IUCN classifies them as only endangered, the Mexican Official Norm has them listed as critically endangered. The CR classification makes more sense to me. There are fewer than 300 mature individuals left, which is close to an 80% reduction in numbers over the span of 15 years. There are so many threats to the survival of these nocturnal animals. They are hunted, not just by their natural predators (the grey fox and coyote) but by humans. They have never had a large range and habitat loss is making that even smaller. There is prescribed burning, livestock over-grazing, a fragmented population with limited genetic pool, and more. They are only in a small area of Oaxaca, and even that area is broken into 4 separate populations.
I have been doing practice pieces in order to decide what I want this year's paintings to look like. I have always liked square format images. I think that is probably because I love old photography so much, and those negatives are square. So, oil paintings are going to be 6x6" squares. The charcoals are on 9x12" toned paper, and the pastels I have not actually decided on the final size! I have 9x12" paper for them, but I want to do an in-between size for them so that it really mixes things up more. My biggest problem with doing a series is boredom. That is why I did the mini-series within last year's project. I will probably do other mini-series this year as well, but with a mix of media I won't be as inclined to boredom. I believe I mentioned that before I started the intermission between the 2 phases, I had only done one oil painting in my life, back in high school. Well, with this beagle painting I have now done 5 of them!