Artists Raise $7,800 for Animals Affected by Gulf Oil Spill
“We don’t have to feel helpless. We can help. Our small actions together will ripple outward.” - Kelly Light
The above quote from Illustrator Kelly Light’s Ripple blog, which so far has raised almost $8,000 for animals affected by the Gulf Oil Spill in the United States, perfectly captures the motivation behind this latest movement amongst artists in the online Illustration community.
Artists tend to come together to support worthwhile causes, whether it’s intellectual property rights or environmental causes like the oil spill.
Kelly is leveraging this great potential to do her part to support something that she believes to be of great importance, and she has graciously agreed to share her thoughts here at Escape from Illustration Island:
“Over the past year I have gotten to know a few sketch card artists. I tried doing some this past Christmas as a promo give away on my own art blog. The day I watched footage of birds so oil soaked they looked like aliens- I was moved to do a few and sell them on my own blog. They sold quickly and soon many illustration friends were emailing me to help with their own cards- so I started a separate blog for them called “Ripple“. It had about 130 cards before I hooked up with illustration Friday- in one week we jumped to 640 cards. – Holy Mackeral!
The best part is that the enthusiasm of the online art community for this new project is producing real results.
“To date we have raised $7,800 – 1 sketch at a time. Illustration Friday was a big help. SCBWI – The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators have helped a lot as well. The amazing thing is to see the ground swell – the “ripple” effect… I guess- of word of mouth- and online person to person promotion of it. I’ve tried to tweet- blog- facebook about it a lot too.
The 2 Non Profits are linked from the blog page: the IBRRC – they clean oiled birds and IMMS – they clean mammals.
http://www.ibrrc.org/
http://www.imms.org/
All donations are direct and no money passes through my hands. The donators CC me their donation confirmation to buy a sketch.
I had heard from a woman cleaning birds- that it took 3 bottles of Dawn dish detergent to clean 1 bird. Each bottle is $3. So – thinking about it that way we have bought 2,500 bottles of Dawn to clean roughly 834 birds. That’s how I like to think about it- we are helping to keep cleaning centers in supplies.”
Want to get involved? Here’s how:
“[Artists should] email me @ ripplesketches@verizon.net. They send me a jpeg along with a blurb about themselves and their links. I post it up and when it sells- I send them the address to mail it to. The art can be sketchcard size 2.5″ by 3.5″ or a little bigger. I just advise keeping it small- it’s easier to mail it. The subject matter is the oceans- Te Gulf- the animals that have been effected- and the disaster. I try to keep the politics out of it but it sneaks in. (rightly so)”
Special thanks to Kelly Light and everyone who has helped the Ripple cause to support animals affected by the Gulf Oil Spill.
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Synchronicity. I sent Kelly three little images I did yesterday.
http://wp.me/stWtY-ripple
This is one of the most creative ways to assist a cause that I’ve ever come across. The artwork on the site is fabulous!!