Painting the Long-eared Jerboa

I had a very hard time with this jerboa. I could only find about 5 reference photos. I try to watch video of an animal if I'm unfamiliar with its structure, to see how it moves and get a better idea of it as a 3D critter. The 2-second clip of a long-eared jerboa did not help at all. I did some other sketches of different poses, but I'm not very happy with how any turned out. I may come back and redo this one when I finish all the others. I also have a hard time mixing the correct color of this thing; that weird grayish-brownish color. It kept coming out greenish. Oh well, can't win 'em all!

It doesn't help much that my cat was sitting on my desk the whole time I painted this. I sit by a window to get some natural light, and my cat likes to look out the window at birds, so her tail was whipping around in my paint and over my paper, and she kept trying to drink my paint water.

Long-eared Jerboa

The long-eared jerboa, Euchoreutes naso, is a jumping rodent. They live in sandy deserts in north western China and Mongolia. Little else is known about these insectivores. Their populations are in decline due to human encroachment into their habitat.

EDGE Focal Species

The ZSL has chosen ten high-ranking species to be the focal species for 2007. These animals had little or no conservation attention, and will be researched further. Here are this year's focal species.

Yangtze River dolphin – Lipotes vexillifer
Long-beaked echidna – Zaglossus bruijni
Hispaniolan solenodon – Solenodon paradoxus
Bactrian camel – Camelus bactrianus
Pygmy hippopotamus – Hexaprotodon liberiensis
Slender loris – Loris tardigradus
Hirola – Damaliscus hunteri
Golden-rumped elephant shrew – Rhynchocyon chrysopygus
Bumblebee bat – Craseonycteris thonglongyai
Long-eared jerboa – Euchoreutes naso