Portrait of a Zebra (Wildlife 01)

The making of ‘750,000’ was a challenge around full-time commission work, but a strong drive in my heart to create the portrait of this amazing equine meant I devoted hours as often as I could to its completion.

When working with my original pieces, I like to spend a lot of time finding the perfect reference photo to work with before beginning the portrait composition. This brilliant shot was provided to me by the wonderful wildlife photographer, Sue Luce.

The original colour pencil artwork is now for sale alongside professional quality giclée prints, available in two sizes. 10% of the original artwork proceeds will go towards African Wildlife Foundation, in an effort to support the conservation of the dazzling herds of zebras and the biodiversity of our planet.

Plains zebra are one of three zebra species and are the most abundant; within them, there are several subspecies that span the grasslands from East to South Africa. They’re very social creatures and tend to stick with their herds; recognising each other by unique stripe patterns - no two are alike.

At 400mm squared, this piece took roughly 45-50 hours to complete. Being my first wildlife piece, I spent copious amounts of time working in the tiniest details - it really was a labour of love.

750,000.

That’s how many plains zebras we have left in our wild. Maybe that seems like a lot. Maybe they’re not as threatened as some other of our planet’s species. But their population has decreased by 24% since 2002, according to IUCN. Considering their gestation length is 10 years, that’s only within 2 generations.

If we were talking about the human race, that’s a loss of 1.8 billion people in just under 20 years.

Although zebras appear simply black and white, when I look at these amazing animals I see such vibrancy. I take great care in my work to portray the animal as it truly is, and in this case I took great care to work in the pale blue gleam in his coat down to the yellow-brown dirt dusting his shoulders. I’m delicate with my colours but keen on the bold tones, mammals physically cannot create blue pigments in their fur but in some photographs the glossiness will catch light at the right moment and show off a deep hue.

The original coloured pencil portrait, 750,000, currently resides in my studio framed, until it meets a new owner. I made the decision to offer my skills to help support conservation efforts for our planet. This is incredibly important to me, and to the rest of us. This portrait of a lone zebra should be the first of my wildlife pieces. If you should be interested in purchasing the original, please know that 10% of the proceeds will go towards African Wildlife Foundation (AWF).