Frédérique Lucas’ masterpiece is complete. Four months in the making, the 17-year-old artist revealed her photo-realistic painting to the world yesterday. Titled “Despedida (Goodbye) Vaquita,” the work manages to capture raw emotion like few other paintings do. It depicts an entangled, washed up Vaquita on a Mexican beach, while the sun vanishes just as the porpoise’s life did. Please share the link below with everyone you know to inspire them to help the Vaquita. We need artwork like this to light a fire in us all to try our hardest to protect this porpoise. Thank you Frédérique and everyone that shares this painting and the Vaquita’s story. I have yet to hear of someone who was not moved by the Vaquita’s predicament, so the problem is that not enough people know. If they did, it would be a whole lot easier to save these little guys.

http://namu-the-orca.deviantart.com/art/Despedida-Vaquita-Goodbye-Vaquita-470879101

In other news, Save the Whales is running a Vaquita drawing contest for students, with the deadline being August 15: http://www.savethewhales.org/STV_StudentContest.html.
The prizes are either 4 tickets to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, or an “Adopt-a-Vaquita Kit” if you can’t make it to California. Those are outstanding prizes, especially for only drawing a picture! This is an opportunity not only to get great cetacean prizes, but also to support the Vaquita while making artwork. I won’t be submitting anything, but I will be making some larger Vaquita paintings soon, where I will put them up for auction with the proceeds going to the Vaquita, as always.
🙂