Awaken Your Senses
An Illustration Series for Our Planet Week 2025
The inspiration for this set of illustrations were the prompts of Our Planet Week 2025, an illustration challenge that aimed to raise environmental awareness through art.
The prompts were: Touch the ground, Feel the air, Hear the ocean, See the wild and Go Beyond.
My concept was creating a series of five illustrations linking each of the five senses to an endangered species, highlighting their unique sensory abilities and raising awareness of the urgent need for their protection.
In addition to the illustrations, I also created a small animated GIF of a hummingbird in flight to bring one of the species to life and add a subtle sense of motion to the project.
Touch the Ground
For this illustration, I decided to feature the Giant Anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). This amazing animal relies on its sensitive snout and limbs to detect vibrations in the ground, guiding it to its food: termites and ants. By doing so, it helps maintain ecological balance, controlling populations of these insects. The main threats to this species are habitat loss, illegal hunting, and road accidents.
(If you like this animal, you might want to check out my other illustration project, Christmas and Tamanduás: A Double Celebration, where this character was originally created.)
Feel the Air
Feeling the air remind me of Rodrigues flying fox (Pteropus rodricensis), an endangered species of fruit bat native to Rodrigues Island, a paradisiacal island that is part of the Republic of Mauritius. They rely heavily on their keen sense of smell to locate ripe fruits, their primary source of food. By feeding on fruit, they help disperse seeds across the island, playing a vital role in the maintenance of forest ecosystems. Unfortunately, their survival is under threat due to habitat loss, particularly the destruction of native fruit trees and forests. Climate change and extreme weather events make the problem even worse.
Hear the Ocean
Living in Portugal, a country deeply connected to the ocean, I couldn’t resist illustrating one of our most iconic marine residents, the Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). They live in the Sado Estuary, where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean. With their extraordinary hearing abilities, they navigate, hunt, and communicate using echolocation.These dolphins play a vital role in maintaining the balance of marine ecosystems, acting as key indicators of ocean health. They are becoming increasingly threatened by habitat degradation, pollution, and human disturbance, particularly due to boat traffic.
See the Wild
For the 4th prompt See the Wild, my illustration was inspired by the Blue-capped Hummingbird (Eupherusa cyanophrys). These birds have extraordinary vision, able to see even ultraviolet light and perceive a world of colors invisible to human eyes! This species, native to Mexico, plays a vital role as a pollinator. But it also carries deep cultural symbolism: in Mexican traditions, dead hummingbirds have been used, even to this day, in love spells as lucky charms, believed to spark passion and connection. It's ironic that birds who see beyond the limits of human vision are so often associated with love, an emotion famously blind. We cherish them, yet we're often blind to the urgency of protecting them. Habitat loss and environmental changes are also placing the Blue-capped Hummingbird under growing threat.
Go beyond
What’s the missing sense in our journey through the five senses? Taste! But how can it be linked to the idea of going beyond? Let’s put the spotlight on the Beluga sturgeon (Huso huso), the ancient fish behind the world’s most prized caviar. This Jurassic-era survivor has existed for over 200 million years, yet today it’s critically endangered. Once a symbol of endurance, the Beluga sturgeon now represents the dark side of human apetite, driven to the edge by overfishing and a luxury market that values status over sustainability. Ironically, Beluga sturgeons are believed to have a keen sense of taste, helping them locate food in the dark, muddy waters of their natural habitat. Meanwhile, it is our own extravagant cravings that threaten their survival.They embody what it truly means to go beyond, not only in their ancient resilience, but in the heavy toll exacted by human desire.
I hope we, as humans, can go beyond our vanity and greed, to choose preservation over profit, and ensure these remarkable species are not lost forever.
For this illustration, I started with thumbnails to explore composition and values, then refined the piece with line art and color studies before arriving at the final result.
Below are the preliminary sketches, value thumbnails and colour explorations.
