Daniel plans to get as close as he can, hopefully just a few feet away. He has to if he's going to get the kind of detailed sketches and photographs he needs to create the kind of high-realist art he's known for.

"Apparently it"s safe enough," he said, brushing off concerns about possible encounters with less than friendly poachers. "The only thing that would really threaten us would be the animals and the bugs."

Ginette doesn't care for hot weather or bugs, though she expects to experience the extremes of both in Africa.

The trip is partly sponsored and organized through a partnership of Artists for Conservation and the African Conservation Foundation. Daniel and Ginette will be joined by field workers, conservationists and biologists who are studying the Cross River gorilla and its habitat.

The Cross River gorilla lives in the remote and densely forested mountains along the Nigeria-Cameroon border. Recent studies show most of them live in 11 separate locations, each at least 10 km apart.

Part of the trip will be a tour of nearby primary schools, where the group will teach kids about their environment, the Cross River gorilla and its preservation. Daniel is packing art supplies for the children to use in his workshops and some of their gorilla drawings will be made into posters and distributed to 30 schools dotted along the forest borders.

The aim of the trip - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as Daniel describes it - is to use art to help save a critically endangered animal in a place where residents are understandably more concerned with immediate survival than the environment's long-term sustainability.

And when he returns, Daniel's artwork will be turned into a display scheduled to tour throughout North America, Europe and Africa to raise further awareness and much-needed funds for conservation efforts.

For more information or to donate, visit

www.natureartists.com or

www.africanconservation.org