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I just realised I’d never posted the finished Dall’s porpoise painting I made for the Porpoise Conservation Society ! High time to make up for that, because it’s one of my favourite things. I had so much fun painting this piece, the lighting, the surface, all those different poses and beautiful faces and markings. The front views were challenging though; Dall’s have very curious proportions that are rarely if ever captured on photographs. It took a lot of tries to get things right.
The painting offers a glimpse into something we will likely never get to see: a Dall’s porpoise nursery pod underwater. Although a striking and conspicuous species, very little is known about Dall’s social lives. Animals that bowride and offer close looks are usually juveniles – females with calves are wary and stay far away from humans. Nonetheless some proof exists to support the idea that females come together in nursery pods, perhaps for protection or to help each other tend to their calves.
Here we see females with calves in all stages of life. Near the surface one mother races along with her almost fully grown daughter, in the foreground another dives down with her newborn in tow, and in the background two mothers socialise: one with another neonate, the other an unruly juvenile. Note the juvenile’s almost delphinid facial markings, and the lighter sides that are almost creamy on the calves and have faded to grey on the juvenile. Dall’s porpoises in fact posses markings like most cetaceans, but as adults they darken out so much that the markings become indistinguishable.

Description

I just realised I’d never posted the finished Dall’s porpoise painting I made for the Porpoise Conservation Society ! High time to make up for that, because it’s one of my favourite things. I had so much fun painting this piece, the lighting, the surface, all those different poses and beautiful faces and markings. The front views were challenging though; Dall’s have very curious proportions that are rarely if ever captured on photographs. It took a lot of tries to get things right.
The painting offers a glimpse into something we will likely never get to see: a Dall’s porpoise nursery pod underwater. Although a striking and conspicuous species, very little is known about Dall’s social lives. Animals that bowride and offer close looks are usually juveniles – females with calves are wary and stay far away from humans. Nonetheless some proof exists to support the idea that females come together in nursery pods, perhaps for protection or to help each other tend to their calves.
Here we see females with calves in all stages of life. Near the surface one mother races along with her almost fully grown daughter, in the foreground another dives down with her newborn in tow, and in the background two mothers socialise: one with another neonate, the other an unruly juvenile. Note the juvenile’s almost delphinid facial markings, and the lighter sides that are almost creamy on the calves and have faded to grey on the juvenile. Dall’s porpoises in fact posses markings like most cetaceans, but as adults they darken out so much that the markings become indistinguishable.