After The PTA Meeting

...and then there were twelve. Original pen and ink drawing on 11"x14" Bristol Board. I really just meant to draw three elephants but I made mistakes so I drew more to cover the mistakes. After that, I just needed to make a dozen because that's a good and useful number. I like Andrew Finnie's definition of PTA: Pachyderm and Teachers Ass. :)

2...3...4...

9...11...12

This is Lati. She is the carabao of Pepe and Pilar, the English primer when I was in first grade. Illustrated her last Sunday while exchanging messages with my former elementary school classmates.

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Gathering The Herd

Gathering The Herd. Original 8"x11" Pen and ink on 11"x14" Bristol Board plate. 

Now available as quality art print, framed and unframed through Society 6 :)

How To Round Up A Herd Of Elephants In A Day

Also on Behance

I was paged  for a problem at work. I needed to take notes, I had no paper... :)

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Do Not Whisper, SHOUT!!! Save The Rhinoceros

 Most endangered mammal in the world!!!

Rhinoceros sondaicus - Javan Rhinoceros, Sunda Rhinoceros, Lesser One-horned Rhinoceros. 

Population: Fewer than 50, only one known location in the wild, Ujung Kulon NP in Indonesia. 

The Vietnamese Javan Rhino officially declared EXTINCT in 2010

Dicerorhinus sumatrensis - Sumatran Rhinoceros

Population: Fewer than 200. Critically endangered.

Ceratotherium simum cottoni - Northern White Rhinoceros, Northern Square-lipped Rhinoceros, with an Einiosaurus-like horn. 

Population: 7 Individuals 
Now only 3 remain

Rhinoceros unicornis - Indian Rhinoceros, Greater One-horned Rhinoceros 

Population: 2,949

 

Diceros bicornis - Black Rhinoceros

Population: 4,860

 Ceratotherium simum simum - Southern White Rhinoceros, Southern Square-lipped Rhinoceros

Population: 20,600 

These rhinoceros illustrations were conceived at a time when I wanted to take a break from drawing elephants. It wasn't so much that the elephant project was burdensome. I just noticed that my lines were becoming sloppy. I love elephants and I felt I was not doing them justice. I decided to read a book, Hidden Worlds of Wildife, by National Geographic where I saw a photograph of a black rhinoceros. I thought it looked very fierce and cool. I was not well informed about the rhino. I decided to read and read...

What I discovered was heart rending. Where once the rhinoceros roamed the jungles, rain forests and savannahs of Africa and Asia, their numbers are dwindling due to illegal poaching for the insatiable desire for their horns erroneously believed to be of medicinal value in traditional Chinese medicine. With the development of the Chinese economy and the upsurge of Chinese middle class, the demand for rhino horns has increased. According to SavingRhino.org, "China was working to circumvent the international trade ban on rhino horn by exploiting a CITES loophole. The country had imported over 100 live rhinos from South Africa since 2000, for the purpose of "farming" rhinos and encouraging the "medicinal use" of rhino horns."

It is a myth that the rhino horn can cure among other diseases, cancer. It does not! The horn is made of keratin, the same material found in hair and fingernails.  Rhino horn is not medicine.

In 2011, the Vietnamese Javan rhino officially became extinct when the last of the rhinos was murdered by poachers in Vietnam. Today the Javan rhinoceros, Rhinoceros sondaicus, is the most endagered mammal in the world with fewer than 50 individuals, in Indonesia. Closer in proximity are the Sumatran rhinos, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, critically endangered and remaining fewer than 200. Also the Indian rhino, Rhinoceros unicornis, endangered and continues to be victims of illegal poaching. The close proximity of these animals to China make them vulnerable to poaching.

I am not much of an activist. In fact, when I believe in a cause, I tend to be calm about it, study it, learn more about it, share information with a few close friends, educate my children and then quietly contribute money or volunteer my time. There are only five extant rhinoceros species remaining in the world, and as such, this rhinoceros illustration project is done. However, as for helping save the rhino, I am NOT done...please join me. I am investigating ways I can make these illustrations serve a purpose. In the meantime, you may want to check out these organizations and donate directly to them:

Saving Rhinos

Save The Rhino

Save the Rhino Trust

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All Things To Nothing Descend...

All things to nothing descend,

Grow old and die and meet their end...

Nor long shall any name resound

Beyond the grave, unless 't be found

In some clerk's book, it is the pen

Gives immortality to men

(Master Wace (1100 - 1175) - from his Chronicles of the Norman Dukes. Found on the Chart of Harold F Umstott (1907-1922 )

and hopefully rhinos don't have to be a thing in the past and a mere relic in some extinct species encyclopedia. There are only three northern white rhinoceros, or northern square-lipped rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) individuals left in captivity. It is extinct in the wild.

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So Many Rhinos, So Little Time...I Stand Corrected

Above, white rhino. Below, Indian rhino. Pen and ink on plate Bristol Board. I really love the smooth texture of this gorgeous 500 series surface. Okay, it's just cotton paper. I love it. I am also experimenting with different pens.

 

I was not happy with the Indian Rhinoceros drawing I recently completed. It was crude. I decided to draw another one (above) and told my friends I was going to draw it again. My brother, ever the inquisitor:

Him: How do you know this is from India?

Me: I did not say it is from India. It is the Indian rhino species - Rhinoceros unicornis. It is primarily found in India's Assam region and also in Nepal. It is the only Asian rhino.

Him: There are Javan and Sumatran rhinos. He he , now you have to draw 3 species. 

Me: WHOOOAAAA!!! You are right. Okay. Never heard of Javan and Sumatran rhino. Thanks for the information. Oh boy so many things to learn.

 Him: so many things to draw by you.

 Me: Sumatran rhinos look different and they have hair! Javan rhinos are so ugly. Hahahah!

 Him: you have to give them a shave, ha ha ha.

Me:  Hahaha. Okay, gotta go to work. Tsup!

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Black Rhinoceros

Art prints framed and unframed available at Society 6. Free shipping worldwide thru Sunday.

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Mommy! I Shrunk The Trash Can!!!

Taking a break from drawing elephants. Drawing rhinoceroses instead.

These are all the pens I used up in one week. Taking a break from drawing elephants. I am planning to draw another pachyderm herd but right now I am drawing a rhinoceros.  I plan to draw the black, white and Indian rhinoceroses. Albrecht Durer must had fun drawing his Indian rhinoceros. He also made a woodcut, both of the images were based on a written description of a rhinoceros because he never really saw a live specimen.  Durer's drawing and woodcut were the basis of so many misrepresentations of the rhinoceros in several masters' paintings for three centuries. How inaccuracies spread, it happened then, it happens now :)

From Wikipedia: "Dürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer in 1515.^[1] The image was based on a written description and brief sketch by an unknown artist of an Indian rhinoceros that had arrived in Lisbon earlier that year. Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times. In late 1515, the King of Portugal, Manuel I, sent the animal as a gift for Pope Leo X, but it died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy in early 1516. A live rhinoceros was not seen again in Europe until a second specimen, named Abada, arrived from India at the court of Sebastian of Portugal in 1577, being later inherited by Philip II of Spain around 1580.^[2][3]

 

Dürer's woodcut is not an entirely accurate representation of a rhinoceros. He depicts an animal with hard plates that cover its body like sheets of armour, with a gorget at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate, and rivets along the seams; he also places a small twisted horn on its back, and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. None of these features is present in a real rhinoceros.^[4][5] Despite its anatomical inaccuracies, Dürer's woodcut became very popular in Europe and was copied many times in the following three centuries. It was regarded by Westerners as a true representation of a rhinoceros into the late 18th century. Eventually, it was supplanted by more realistic drawings and paintings, particularly those of Clara the rhinoceros, who toured Europe in the 1740s and 1750s. It has been said of Dürer's woodcut: "probably no animal picture has exerted such a profound influence on the arts".^[6]" Read the full article here.

Aaah! Sunday chores...

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