Ghosts of Gone Birds // All Tropical Competition

Ghost of Gone Birds is a really interesting project that commissions a variety of artists to create responses to extinct bird species on order to promote conservation of endangered species and to "breathe artistic life back into" those already lost. The following from the All Tropical website explains in more detail:

The organisers of the Ghosts of Gone Birds project are raising a creative army for conservation through a series of multimedia exhibitions that breathe artistic life back into extinct bird species, celebrating their diversity through paintings & sculpture, talks & poetry, installations & live music.

The project presents a unique collection of originally commissioned artworks, literature and music from some of the UK’s leading contemporary artists, writers and performers including - Ralph Steadman, Sir Peter Blake, Rob Ryan, Billy Childish, Desmond Morris, Pete Fowler, Charming Baker, Jamie Hewlett, Kai and Sunny, Rebecca Jewell, Bruce Pearson, Olly and Suzi, Robert Gillmor, Dafila Scott and Jimi Goodwin - each one of them has adopted an extinct species and breathed life back into it through their creative talents (Jamie Hewlett from Gorillaz has a Hawaiian crow; Rob Ryan has the Stephen's Island wren; Holly Johnson went for liver birds, and Billy Childish the Reunion owl).

There is going to be an exhibition of the work at the Rochelle School, Shoreditch from the 2-23 November at which the T-Shirt that wins this competition will be sold.

There will be voting from the 7 October so I shall be calling on you all again when that comes around. 

I chose to illustrate the Glaucous Macaw, this little guy isn't officially recognised as extinct – although Wikipedia has the species listed in it's extinct birds page. The species originates from South America  but hasn't been spotted in the wild since 1960 and expeditions since then to try to find it have all failed. I felt it was a good choice to highlight the work of BirdLife's Preventing Extinctions Programme. Two very close relations of  the Glaucous Macaw are the Lear's Macaw and the Hyacinth Macaw are endangered and likely to go the same way as their cousin if something isn't done about the variety of threats to their survival. I love the subtle gradient of colour of this parrot from head to tail, but it's a shame to be only able to draw it from approximations and illustrations, it is particularly sad to see so many photographs of dead birds turn up in a search, when alive their faces are beautiful and full of so much character and charm.