Orangutan awareness week – Nov 4-10, 2018!
I have always wanted to challenge myself with a large painting. So after finally being able to purchase some on sale in 2015, I was ready. After deciding on Orangutans, then looking through many posted images. I settled on a mother with a baby on her back.
I began the process of enlarging the photo by using the grid method. Sketching and shading the orangutans onto the canvas, it had begun. A little intimidated, I started with the background, following the rules of back to front, light to dark, thin to thick using many layers of oil paint.I left the orangutans pencil grey at this point. Many people thought it was finished, it was quite striking.
Being such a large canvas, I found my easels were very flimsy for the task of holding the 3ft x 4 ft canvas. So I really had to hold on as I painted, which is very challenging, especially when i paint all sides of the canvas.
I have had many life distractions, including other art related projects in between the many layers added. For Christmas 2017, I was given a new bigger easel, which arrived in Jan 2018. I never really had a chance to put it to use, until recently. So after testing it out with the Horse, it was finally the Orangutans’ turn.
While working on the Orangutans, I was made more aware of their plight. I discovered how many products I was personally using that contained palm oils. We made a huge effort to read all labels and avoid even more products. As we had also changed our eating to vegetarians, due to food allergies, we found our list of things to avoid growing. We try to cook all our food from scratch and purchase as much locally as possible. A great site helping organize that info is Better World Shopper.
I would like to bring attention to a wonderfully animated video that was banned for being too political, regarding the struggle of the orangutans, now on YouTube.
