Shantha’s gentle giants: It’s something to trumpet about
By Minushi Perera
It took him all of 17 years and many long hours of sketching and sketching but now he has the complete set. For wildlife artist, environmentalist, instructor foraquatic life for the Young Zoologists Association (YZA) and Co-founder of the wildlife art group of the YZA, this set of five sketches which he calls ‘Gentle Giants’ is truly a labour of love.
Born and raised in Colombo, Shantha was a student of Asoka Junior School and then Ananda College Colombo after grade 6. He has been a member of the YZA since he was 12 years old through Ananda College as they had a branch of the YZA. Later he had become an instructor for the association as he was deeply interested in wildlife. Speaking of how he got into art and sketching Shantha said he was influenced and encouraged by his colleague and friend Prasanna Weerakkody.
Shantha started sketching by studying fish in a tank at home and later on he had continued to sketch various forms of marine life. His particular interest in elephants started in 1990 after assisting in a research study of the Gangarama Perahera elephants for former curator of the Zoo, Hiyasith Molligoda. Seeing Shantha’s first sketch of an elephant, zoologist P.B. Karunarathna had praised it, which had been the encouragement for him to continue sketching elephants.
When sketching, he uses photographs only as reference to get specific details of the subject. He prefers drawing by watching live animals and says one complete sketch was done while observing an elephant in the zoo without any photographs.
Shantha was the artist chosen to do a poster on fresh water fishes of Sri Lanka on behalf of USAID in 1994. This was followed by a poster on Turtles of Sri Lanka for the turtle conservation project in 1995 and the stickers on zoo animals for the 60th anniversary of the National Zoological Gardens in 1996. He has done a black and white ink series of sketches for postcards under the theme ‘Nature around home’ in 1999 and the illustrations for the SLT calendar in 2007.
He had also been the illustratrator for the newsletter of the Regional Biodiversity Programme for South and East Asia of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature from 20012003 and also done the illustrations for a booklet published by the Elephant and Biodiversity Conservation Trust in 2002.
Shantha has also illustrated other books and guides such as the composting guide done for USAID in 1995 and ‘The field guide to reef fishes of Sri Lanka - Volume 1 & 2’ published in 2013 and 2014. He had illustrated a book published in Germany ‘Farming Like the Forest’ on traditional home garden systems in Sri Lanka in 1998 and done the illustrations for a FrenchSinhala folk storybook ‘La Fonte’in 2001.
His art goes hand in hand with his conservation work, conducting research, doing inventories on wildlife. Shantha also has his own organisation ‘ Aquatic Resource Management’ that mainly focuses on aquatic species and receives funds from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Sri Lanka.
With plans to have an exhibition of his wildlife and marine life sketches, he plans to do sketches of various places in Sri Lanka and sketches of extinct animals virtually.
“These 5 elephant sketches are by far the most important sketches out of my art work,” Shantha says continuing that it is because he had given a lot of time and effort to perfect them as much as he could. Shantha’s package of sketches consists of a sketch of a baby elephant at the Pinnawala elephant orphanage, famous tusker Raja of Heiyantuduwa, a herd of elephants and 2 individual sketches of elephants.
The sketches sold are scanned printouts of his original sketches. To purchase the package of sketches ‘ Gentle Giants’ contact Shantha Jayaweera on 071 7547677 or shanthaparadisefish@yahoo.com.