"Orangutan" Painting

“Orangutan”

15 x 11 cm , watercolour on paper

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

As an Indonesian, a human being who live in a country with its second largest biodiversity, and a Biology student whose life’s been haunted by the figure of Jane Goodall and George Schaller since last year, I feel that I have an obligation to promote my own country to the world. I really am not saying this with uneasy feeling. There’s nobody forces me to came to this realization. Even my parents, they’re not the one who told me to take Biology as my major.

So, it all started when I saw a brochure on a download page of WWF Indonesia website. The brochure told me that the Javan rhinos were in danger because of their decreasing amount. I don’t know why, but the pictures of the rhinos somewhat inspired me to do something. Something that was interesting and could be important in future. As a I sketched the Javan rhino’s head, a very surprising thought came to me: this wildlife painting could be my own way in saving the animal, especially the endangered one like this rhino. So, right after I finished painting, I promised to myself that I’d continue painting wild animals. Just because I can’t participate in NGO activities (because of very tight schedule as a student) doesn’t mean I can’t do something different to raise the awareness of people of the animals in Indonesia.

One of my 2011-2012 resolutions as a painter is paint at least two endangered animals in Indonesia. Some of them I’ve known so far are Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus), Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), and Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii). I’ve made a painting of the head of Javan rhinoceros with same medium and tools (titled “Hello, Rhino!”) last December, so with this “Orangutan” painting, I’m coming to the minimum amount of paintings I should made according to the resolution.

The sketch

The final look of “Orangutan” painting. Honestly, it doesn’t look very real to me since I painted it with no hair. Maybe the most suitable title for this painting should be “Bald Orangutan” or “The Orangutan with No Hair” (reminds me so much of “The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo”) hahaha.

I’m looking forward to paint another endangered animals in future. How about… the Sumatran rabbit (Nesolagus netscheri)?

P.S.: My paintings are now available on postcards! Please kindly inform me if you’re interested in exchanging postcards with me. For you who don’t live in Indonesia, let’s do some pen-pallings. I have a Postcrossing account. How about you? :)