SPECIAL: Ripple Donation

"We don't have to feel helpless. We can help. Our small actions together will ripple outward."
I've finally finished my sketchcards for the awesomest of awesome art charity fundraisers: RippleSketches, benefitting the animal victims of the Deep Water Horizon Gulf Oil Spill. The four Non Profits benefitted are hands-on groups on site cleaning animals: International Bird Rescue Research Center, The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, The Sea Turtle Conservancy, and Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research. My cards will go live on the site next Wednesday and will be available for sale at $10 each.

This has been a really great project to work on. These aren't my typical style either, I really wanted to so some experimenting and thus didn't have an entirely clear idea of what I was going to do as I started out with each piece. Here's a deatiled list of info for each piece:
Brown Pelican: Pen & Ink, Colored Pencil and Gouache on Rag Board, 2.5" x 3.5"
Dolphin: Pen & Ink and Colored Pencil on Arches Hot press Watercolor paper, torn/deckle edges, 2.5" x 3.5"
Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle: Colored Pencil and Gouache on red cardstock, 2.5" x 3.5"
Great Lakes Piping Plover Chick: Colored Pencil and Gouache on blue, ridged cardstock, 2.5" x 3.5"
Sawfish: Pen & Ink, Colored Pencil and Gouache on blue, ridged cardstock 2.5" x 3.5"
Shrimp: Colored Pencil on Arches Hot press Watercolor paper, torn/deckle edges, 2.5" x 3.5"
Sperm Whales: Colored Pencil and Gouache on red cardstock, 2.5" x 3.5"

I did do some homework to find out which animals were or might possibly in the future, be most effected by the tragic oil spill in the gulf. Most of my sketches are based on these already at-risk animals: Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle, Great Lakes Piping Plover, Brown Pelican, Smalltooth & Largetooth Sawfish, & the Sperm Whale. I also felt shrimp have been under the radar during this disaster - everyone's talking about the fisherman at risk of & losing their livelihoods, but what about these tiny creatures that they harvest daily for their own financial gain - now being threatened by the very water that sustains their life?

It seems like every day we are finding new and terrible ways to destroy our own planet, and it's always an accident. Big risk, big rewards. For industry, it's another blip - the accidental disaster either destroys them and they're replaced by someone else - or they recover and keeping on doing the same. It's not totally unlike natural selection… only we CAN MAKE CHOICES… and we keep making the wrong ones.

*please note: the red stars on the cards have no particular significance other than to add a somewhat three-dimensional element to the designs and identify then as mine, and part of this group.