So, this month I have had a lot on the artistic palette.

I have been steadily working on a New Zealand bird series this month, experimenting with Clairefontane pastelmats and coloured pencils. Why pastelmats? Well, they are made to hold pastels, so they are made of many layers of paper with fine cellulose fibre, this allows it to hold more colour layers and this makes it ideal for working with birds, which hold both a lot of subtle and gentle layers and bold splashes of colour.

So far on pastelmats I have done Grey Warblers, Rifleman and North Island Robin. All three are available for purchase as prints here:

https://jamiewillisart.com/product/nz-native-birds-rifleman-tititipounamu/

https://jamiewillisart.com/product/grey-warbler-riroriro-nz-native-birds-print-copy/

https://jamiewillisart.com/product/nz-native-bird-print-north-island-robin-toutouwai/

What inspired me to start a series of New Zealand native birds is this country holds a lot of unique avifauna species which evolved in isolation and without the threat of predation – until of course man got here and introduced a whole bunch contributing to the largest extinction waves ever documented, losing about half of our unique avifauna species, including entire taxonomic families being wiped from existence – quite a grim track record really.

To put it in clear terms – the damage done is so severe that to it would take approximately 50 million years to recover. That’s right – 50 million years. For those interested, this is where I got that figure: (https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2020/03/13/it-would-take-50-million-years-to-recover-new-zealands-lost-bird-species/)

 Since then, there has been a slow and consistent decline of our remaining avifauna. For example last year the annual Bird Count hosted by Landcare Research revealed a significant decline of about 80 per cent in the black billed gull (tarāpuka) and red-billed gull (tarāpunga) populations, these birds were quite the fixed feature of any coastal area in my childhood, what with their ear-blasting cackle as they flew off with your chips! Now to hear that they have declined by that much, it’s gut-wrenchingly harrowing.

This year Landcare is hosting yet another bird count (29/06), so I encourage you to do this – it’s free to sign up and will only take an hour of your time on the day it is held: (https://gardenbirdsurvey.nz/take-part/)

This helps researchers track the overall health of the bird population in response to environmental factors and the more information they have the more accurate they can be.

With this in mind, I plan to continue drawing native birds and will donate a portion from the sales of my native bird series to NZ Forest & Bird for their continuing efforts with raising awareness and funds for conservation efforts.

With birds in mind, I would also like to take the opportunity to make mention of the Sketch for Survival Art Competition, held by Explorers Against Extinction, which focuses on conservation efforts globally. The task for this competition is to draw an animal from the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) list. Competition is tough with only 100 entries from over 90 countries getting picked into the second round, where the winners will be displayed in London and Edinburgh and then auctioned off online with all proceeds going towards their Project Fund to help with conservation efforts (I have included my Facebook post at the bottom of this blog).

I picked the Kākāpō. There are only 247 of these guys left, so naturally they are listed as “critical”.

Ever since seeing the famous Stephen Fry video where he had an experience with a burly male Kākāpō, I decided they were just the most delightful creature and therefore absorbed as much info about them as I possibly could, which only made me like them more. In fact, it is on my bucket list to see a live Kākāpo.

The aforementioned video on YouTube is at the bottom of this blog.

I went with a minimalist approach using black 200gsm Fabriano paper as I wanted the gorgeous hues of the moss chicken to be on display and to draw the eye. Also, symbolically the black is a rather dire and grim colour – signifying their potential march into extinction if things don’t change significantly enough to preserve their uniqueness. It is a hope of mine that I will live to see their species (and others) on an upwards trajectory away from the IUCN list.

Wow, so that’s a bit of bird-related art news/info to digest! After I finish working on my current canvas for an art competition in August I plan on doing another NZ Native Bird on pastelmat, but the question is, which one! If you have any suggestions please note them in the comment section, would love your thoughts!