GORILLA
Acrylic wildlife paintings by Peter Asagba. Awareness of endangered wildlife and conservation through art

THE SILVERBACK

Medium:  Acrylic on canvas  (c) 2011 Available for sale

Mountain Gorillas are critically endangered, majestic, and iconic dwellers of the forested mountains adjoining Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  If you paint a gorilla, you must be prepared to do a lot of vegetation as all gorilla species are basically forest dwellers.  That is the real challenge when painting gorillas.  The greenery is always a decisive factor.  For the gorilla itself, there is one basic factor that sets an adult male apart from the females and youngsters: that distinctive white-colored back for which it gets the name ”Silverback”.  When painting a Silverback, you have to bring out those greyish features so that they stand out from the predominantly black fur.

OSTRICH

Medium:  Acrylic on heavyweight card paper (c) 2011 Available for sale

A male ostrich is very easy to tell apart from a female.  What many may not know about birds is that it is the male who carries the beauty in most cases and the ostrich is no exception.  While the females wear pale and dull brown colouring, the males have this distinctive neat and alluring black colouration with white tips at the end.  This can be quite an appealing factor for nature artists.  Ostriches are inhabitants of the vast African savannah so an artist already knows his environment type for this bird.  

lion and lioness

THE KING AND QUEEN

Medium:  Acrylic on cardsheet paper  (c) 2022 Available for sale

For me the lion has always represented majesty, grace and power.  When it comes to art, I always have a special place in my heart for these iconic beasts and I love to paint them in their own world so that the lion alone is not the only subject in the feature.  The natural environment matters a lot to me as is the case with any other painting I make on wildlife.  African lions are creatures of the open savannah, so in most cases when painting lions there is little work to do regarding its surroundings unlike if I had to painting a forest dwelling creature.

peter asagba
Peter Asagba

Peter Jite Asagba was born in London, United Kingdom but was raised and educated in Nigeria.  A connoisseur of the arts, he has a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and has always had a flair for art and creative writing.  He presently lives in London where he works as a freelance teaching assistant and is married with 3 children. He has published a children's animal storybook called Teebu the Leopard (available in Teambookshop).

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