Michelle Wrighton Fine Art and Photography

I painted this Orangutan in acrylics some time ago, but havn’t managed to get a very good photo of it yet, so I think I may have to have it professionally scanned before I can offer prints for sale to help support Orangutan conservation. I am planning on doing a few more portraits of these beautiful creatures for the same purpose when I locate suitable reference photos.

“Wise One”

18″x24″, Acrylics on Gallery wrapped canvas

Cards and prints featuring this artwork can be purchased at

Orangutan Information:

Orangutans are a critically endangered species that desperately need our help to stop poaching and to protect their rainforest habitats which are being destroyed for palm oil plantations – without major intervention Sumatran Orangutans will be extinct in the wild by 2010, and Bornean Orangutans will be extinct in the wild by 2015.

Orangutans are highly intelligent primates that are one of our closest relatives being 97% genetically identical to humans. The orangutan is the only great ape that comes from Asia (gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos all come from Africa). The two species of ornagutan are the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) and the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus). Sumatra is the largest island in Indonesia and Borneo is the island above Java in central South East Asia and is divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

Oranguatan’s have a lifespan in the wild of 35-40 years, although in captivity they can live into their fifty’s. They reach puberty at about 8 years of age, but females arn’t ready to reproduce until they are in their teens. Orangutans have the longest period of dependence on their mothers of any animal in the world and the babies nurse until they are about six years of age. In order to learn all the skills needed for their survival, males stay with their mothers for a few more years, but the females stay even longer so that they can learn the mothering skills by watching their mother raise their younger sibling.

Orangutans have the longest time between reproduction of any other mammal – only once every eight years which means that females will only have 4 or 5 babies in their lifetime. This is why wild orangutan populations will not recover from poaching and habitat destruction without major intervention.

When reproductions of this painting are available for purchase, a percentage of the profit from each sale will be donated to the Australian Orangutan Project, a non-partisan organization that supports many orangutan conservation organizations. The AOP is non-partisan and funds are distributed due to conservation needs only. There is only one part time administrator, but as no salaries are paid to the many volunteers who work for AOP, a very high percentage of donations go straight to the organisations that are involved in the active welfare of Orangutans habitat protection.

Australian Orangutan Project Website

Please support the Australian Orangutan Project either by making a donation, adopting and orangutan, becoming a member or purchasing some of the beautiful orangutan merchandise from the AOP shop including toys, books, greeting cards, t-shirts and more.

I have just opened a Gallery on Imagekind, a US based print on demand service that allows you to purchase fine art prints from as little as $12.74US for prints which can be customized and ordered with millions of combinations of frames, museum quality papers, canvas types, and sizes.

Giclee Technology

Giclee is a form of fine art printing which is superior to any previous form of inkjet printing. Giclee is a French word that means a spray of liquid, which possibly derived from the word “gicleur” meaning “nozzle” or “to squirt.”

The giclee printing system allows a precise level of color representation and ImageKind offers eight different paper types and two different canvas types that are widely used in the visual art world for prints and paintings, look tremendous, and will last for years.

Examples of framed ImageKind prints:

I nearly forgot to post an update with the final of my lion, so here he is, Part II of “We Three Kings”, 8″x8″, artist colour pencil on drafting film.

I’m not surprised that more and more colour pencil artists are starting to use drafting film for their work. I am now absolutely convinced that drafting film is the perfect support for use with colour pencils, at least with my style and technique. It is definitely not easy to use initially, and it handles totally different to any other support that I have worked with (it dosn’t take as many layers so you really have to make each mark count!), but the results as definitely worth it, so I will be doing a lot more work on film in the future!

Cards and prints featuring this artwork can be purchased at

This colour pencil and acrylic portrait of Blink, a beautiful cat owned by a fellow artist, was also created on drafting film. I love this up-close-and-personal, larger than life composition, where the main focus is on the eyes – in this case the eyes are huge, 2″x 1.5″ in size, while the whole artwork is about 10″x9″ in size.

I’m updating this to add some photos of this one in progress as quite a few people have trouble believing its not a photograph, even though I have cropped the painting to include some of the blank paper at the bottom:)  I keep a small camera next to my easel and document the progress of nearly all the pieces that I create.

Cat portrait Work In Progress 1

Cat portrait Work In Progress 2

Cat portrait Work In Progress 3

Cat portrait Work In Progress 4

Cat portrait Work In Progress 5

And the final Image, I added some of the white whiskers in white acrylic, as the drafting film was loaded with cp pigment.  Please let me know what you think of “Blink”!

Cards and prints featuring this artwork can be purchased at

Yes, I know this post is out of order:) better late than never, right?

This is the first in my big cat triptych, “We Three Kings”, and my first experiment with using colour pencils on drafting film. I started with a much more detailed sketch than I normally do because I my focus was on learning how to use this support (it handles very differently to any other support that I have tried).

I did find that not all drafting films are created equal:( Although the type I used for this tiger was excellent for the pigment saturation and luminosity it allowed, unlike other types of drafting film, although it erased easily, I could not get much pigment back into the erased areas….making erasing mistakes impossible!

Considering this was an experiment, I am very pleased with how he turned out. Oh and if you are wondering about the title – I didn’t actually start out planning to do a Big Cat triptych, but the night I finished this one I was laying in bed when the title popped into my head (actually, titles for my artwork rarely pop gently into my head, they usually hit me like a sledgehammer;). I knew instantly that the next one in the series would be the lion, but I am still not sure who will be the third king cat. Watch this space to find out!

Work In Progress shot 1:

Work In Progress shot 2:

Work In Progress shot 3:

Final: “We Three Kings part I: Tiger”

I’d love to know what you think of him!

Cards and prints featuring this artwork can be purchased at

Two new dog breed portraits have now been added to the Dogs gallery, a Shiba Inu and another Shar-Pei (I just can’t resist wrinkles!). Both of these are color pencil/acrylic on drafting film.

Suki - Shiba Inu Pet Portrait

Aspen - Shar-Pei Painting

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