Endangered Species in Art: Leopards

A lot of artists paint endangered species, not just to preserve the image of a beautiful creature that might one day soon no longer exist, but to help raise awarenes of the urgent need to try to prevent its extinction. It's not surprising considering whatever love of nature it is that motivates them to paint also makes them concerned about their art subjects. Here are some artists who are painting not just to create beautiful images but also to try and help save the animals in these images. Many of these artists not only paint to raise awareness of the animal's plight but also to raise money for organizations that help protect them. So next time you consider buying a piece of wildlife art considering buying from one of the artists out there who is doing his or her part to help save a species. Here are just a few examples. There are so many species endanged, unfortunately, that I'm only focusing on one group today, the endangered leopards.


Brenda Johnson - 10% of sales of this print go to the Snow Leopard Trust

For more artwork devoted to endangered species conservation visit the endangered species art section of the Artists for Conservation web site.

Uncommon Wildlife Art Subjects: Manatee

This morning, while enjoying the fleeting summer sunshine up here in WA, I sat out in the backyard with my dog, a cup of coffee, and the sound of chickadees at my bird feeder, and did a little reading. Reading is something I seem to have way more of then time for since I have a bad habit of collecting more books and magazines than I'll be able to read in a lifetime. But I managed to grab a few minutes this morning to pick up an unread issue of National Wildlife Magazine. It was the April/May 2007 issue and contained an article about manatees entitled, "Smarter Than They Look" and talked about how manatees, once thought to be rather stupid creatures, are actually quite intelligent.

"Far from being slow learning, manatees, it turns out, are as adept at experimental tasks as dolphins, though they are slower-moving and, having no taste for fish, more difficult to motivate."

It was a very interesting article, actually, and this made start to think about how many truly fascinating creatures there are in the world that, because they aren't the prettiest, no one wants a picture of them on their living room wall. Well, few people anyway. It got me thinking about uncommon and unusual subjects of wildlife art and I decided to take a look and see if I could find artwork of manatees. Everyone has their animals that appeal to them and surely someone, somewhere, must like manatees, homely as they are, and has drawn, painted, or sculpted one, right?

Well, you certainly won't find as much artwork on manatees as you would elk or tigers but there are some. So here some images I found of artwork of manatees, my first subject in my "Uncommon Wildlife Subjects" blog series. Enjoy.

Don Ray

Gloria Hopkins

Linda Thompson

Rick Cain

Edward Hobson

Diane Muratore Bruckner

Barry R. Ingham

I tried to find a painting of a dugong could only come up with a couple of illustrations, not what would be considered fine art. If you know of a painting of dugong let me know and I'll add it here. To help you identify them here's a chart of the various specious of the order Sirenia from Sirenian International. The most obvious difference is the tail, the dugong having one shaped more like a dolphin or whale while the manatee has a round paddle-like tail similar to a beaver. (Click the image for a larger view)