Hello Everyone!!

This my entry for the contest of @jacinta.sevilla, who has the initiative to encourage drawing or painting a cetacean.

I really did not know the cetacean species that exist, so I had to do some research to know about the subject, and also choose which one to draw.

My choice was the Lagenorhynchus Acutus or by its better-known name Atlantic White-Sided Dolphin, mainly I was struck by its characteristic and unique, colorful physique.

Atlantic White-Sided Dolphin

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As you can see, from the family of cetaceans this dolphin is one of the smallest.

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These dolphins live under the coldest temperatures in the north of the Atlantic Ocean, their name comes from their physical appearance which is the distinctive feature of a patch that ranges from white to yellow, which gives it a unique color variation between the different cetaceans, was named after John Edward Gray in 1828. It belongs to the genus of oceanic dolphins Lagenorhynchus.

The Atlantic White-Sided dolphins are also recognized for being quite acrobatic, that is, they are those who like to interact with boats, and of course, as almost all species of dolphins, they are very sociable.

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This species, as its name indicates, lives around the North Atlantic Ocean, the most populated places are the islands of Newfoundland and Cape Cod, then the United Kingdom, Iceland, Greenland, and part of the North Sea.

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Another reason why I chose this species is after looking a bit at its history, in the past they had been hunted between the 90's and 2000, and after a few years without the murder of dolphins, in the year of 2017, several were killed at the north of Newfoundland. However, the populations closest to the Baltic Ocean are covered by the Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas (ASCOBANS).

Step by step

I do not usually show the materials I use because I forget it, but this time I made sure to take a picture of them.

What a mess

This is my reference image for my painting:

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I just loved and had to choose this one!

Step 1: The sketches are not seen much, but first I made a sketch with the 3H pencil trying to imitate the position of the photograph that I took as a reference.

Step 2: I started making a grayscale on its top with black watercolors, but in doing so with this type of painting my intention was to make it more delicate instead of realistic.

Step 3: What I did next took a little yellow but mixed with white so it was not so dark, I made his characteristic patch and delineate his eye with a black marker.

Step 4: At this time I had to start making the environment, the sea with blue tones, in the photograph I can still see a little-wet paper, I'm sorry about that.

Step 5: The rest of the sea water I did with several shades of blue, between dark and light, also leave some white spaces to have a better effect, the division between the outside and the inside of the water in the skin of the dolphin was simpler than what I thought.

Step 6: Almost done, just added the white nail polish as foam and drops of the sea, as you can see below.

And the final result:

And this is me with my painting :) !!

I had a lot of fun painting this beautiful dolphin, it's the first time I've made one, I think it was not too bad to be the first one.

I hope you enjoy!

Thanks for be here!

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©2018 María Zerpa