“I believe that conservation is not one man’s work, but everyone’s small steps. To get more people to know and to care more about the issue is what I aim for, and to know that what we do and contribute can be another hand to help save other lives is what keeps me going.”

illulasiesta answered questions from PARDICOLOR founder Demelza Stokes via email in July 2021.

You're a 'biologist by degree, artist by heart'. Tell us about how you began doing your fantastic illustrations, did you begin with the biology or the art?

I’ve started my career as a biology student exploring possibilities of how to convey my messages regarding wildlife conservation to larger circles. Growing up in an artsy, animal-loving family has rooted a passion for art and animals within me since I was little, though for a young me back then, it was about picking one of the two. I decided to go for science knowing animals are what I always want to work ‘for’, and art had been put aside for a little bit. It was a tough decision, but it is one I never regret – life in B.Sc. has taught me so much and it has geared me with more understanding about nature I imagine I would never get if I were an art student. I then get to work with and be inspired by many great people, and the more I do, the more I realize that conservation is very much about education.

Working with Wildlife Conservation & Education NGOs has given me opportunities as an educator to develop my own medium. Since art is something I can never give up, I started to bring back what I love into what I do. “illulasiesta” is a pen name that I go by and a platform for me to sync two of the things I care most about to create some positive impacts towards the world, spreading awareness in a form of art, hopefully pushing it for the better-beings of wildlife. I’ve always been drawing, but I guess now I can say I’ve been drawing more purposefully.

What was the inspiration behind this Wildlife of Southern Thailand series?

This ‘Wildlife of Southern Thailand’ Series is a compilation of some highlighted species of urban wildlife and wildlife sighted in Khao Lak, Phang Nga, Southern Thailand, 2019-2020. All artworks in this series are dedicated to a long-term Conservation & Education project in a collaboration with Love Wildlife Foundation and Khao Lak Merlin Resort as educational materials for a species guide and information signages in an awareness raising campaign to promote ecological diversity and abundance, environmental sustainability, and wildlife conservation locally and regionally.

You've done a few collaborations with wildlife conservation organisations. How do those collaborations begin? And, why do you do your work? 

It all started from connections. My very first animal illustrations were for a small appendix section of my own thesis back in college – I was very much encouraged by my professors, and it lightened up from there. I then came to realize that making art for this cause is really what I want to do when I got to work with Love Wildlife Foundation (LWF). I started from making small animal fun-fact posts once a week, a merchandize design for fundraising, then a teaching module of my own that consists of a lot of artsy elements. I taught mostly mini-sapiens, and I get inspired every time I see them have fun and learn so much through the lines that they create and that they feel the connection through the effort they put into their work. It brings out curiosity, detail-observing, and answer-seeking. It is just a delightful moment when we get to appreciate something and learn from it.

Today I draw for wildlife conservation projects in and around Thailand, mostly as educational, awareness-raising, and fundraising materials. I believe that conservation is not one man’s work, but everyone’s small steps. To get more people to know and to care more about the issue is what I aim for, and to know that what we do and contribute can be another hand to help save other lives is what keeps me going.

What do you hope people takeaway from your work, or experience when they see your work? 

What I hope for what I do is to make more people see, appreciate, understand, and respect nature more. I do believe that conservation is based on love – because how can you protect something if you don’t love them, and how can you love them if you don’t know anything about them at all – and this is where education takes place. Oftentimes we don’t realize that what we do has negative consequences, and oftentimes we just let it be out of ignorance, or simply because we don’t know them well enough.

Art can help us understand nature so much. Animal art to me is like highlighting features of the animal and express them in our very own way – no matter what the style or medium is, like myself that I do semi-realistic illustration, it might not be 100% scientifically accurate, but what’s there is the key features of that animal, in which when we get to understand these characteristics – like why birds have wings, why certain birds have certain kind of wings, or different kind of beaks, feet, or even colors – we will get to understand more of a very important mechanism of nature that these very specific features are designed to suit certain niches certain animals have. So not only to introduce the species, but also ‘what’ about it; ‘where’ it lives; ‘why’ it matters; and ‘how’ we can help. To know this I think is already a good first step to conservation anyone can take, and they are the messages that I’m trying to embed into my work, and to me art is another great medium to connect people to nature, also because in a way, nature is already an art :)

Have you got any upcoming projects you're working on? Is there any conservation issue that you'd like to work on? 

I do have a few! One of which is a series nicknamed ‘Bangkok Wildlife’ that I will be highlighting the general diversity of urban wildlife in Bangkok, Thailand, where I grew up. The idea is to make us humans appreciate our surroundings more, because sometimes living a city life might have shaped us to feel disconnected to wildlife and makes us forget that ‘nature’ is closer to our heart than we think. Here I hope to make us get to know more and to care more about the wilds, starting from somewhere very close to us – the city – what they are, why they are important, and what we can do to preserve them. This series will hopefully take us out to the greens, and let us appreciate the matters we might have missed, then take a moment to observe and absorb things around us just a little bit more carefully.