Latest Project : Elephant

Yes, dearly beloved, it’s time to update you on my next project, and once again we’re making an acrylic painting.

For this next acrylic painting I considered going back to old favourites – more horses, more trams, more steam engines – but then two of my last three canvases have been horses. In the past I tried painting other animals – a camel and a stag, with frankly disappointing results. Still, emboldened by the success of my recent plough horses painting I wanted to give another go. This time I wanted to make a picture, still using a 20 x 16 board, where I would get across something of the size, power and majesty of the creature. Hence I settled on this.

Yes, an elephant. Now if you look at this first photo you’ll see that I’ve hardly sketched in more than the outline. On the Shrewsbury poster I found that I needed to sketch in many more lines, but the graphite always gives trouble if you’re painting a light colour over it, so I wanted to keep that to a minimum. It only took about 20 minutes to make this sketch onto the canvas.

There’s an excellent word in Welsh – hwyl. There’s no exact English equivalent, but it kind of means the heart, the spirit to get up and do something. Well, I didn’t have the hwyl to do any more on the picture until Artists’ group last night. I had, though, worked out a plan of attack. Now, I ask you to please remember that I’ve never had any formal lessons or training in Art – not since I was 13 anyway, and that was only at school. So if what I’m about to write seems stupid or goes against accepted best practice, well, that’s probably the reason why.

In the past I’d often start and paint the really enjoyable ‘bit’ first. So on “The Home Straight” – my first acrylic horse racing painting – I painted in the main horse and jockey first before even sketching in the background. Come to think of it, I was still working this way towards the end of last year when I made “London Tram on Highgate Hill”. In the cause of better results, though, I’ve tried hard to be more disciplined. On all 3 of this year’s acrylics I’ve painted in the background first. Being right handed I usually work from left to right, so that I don’t end up dragging my hand over freshly painted areas of the picture. 

Last night, then, I painted a layer of yellow, greatly lightened with white, where the foliage will be. The idea behind this is that it would allow me to let the yellow come through in areas where the sun was dappling the foliage. This didn’t take very long. Assessing my options, I decided that for once I was going to start on the right hand side. Experience told me that it was highly unlikely I would finish working on the foliage in this area before the end of the session, and then the paint would easily dry before the next time I go to paint.

I don’t know how well it shows on the photograph but I’ve actually used four different hues of sap green. The darkest is just the basic sap green. This also formed the base for the other green hues, achieved by adding different amounts of gamboge yellow, white and/or burnt umber. It took a long time to build up the various layers, but I’m not desperately unhappy with it. I wanted the trunks of the trees on the right to have a slight pinkish hue, but they’re just not right as they are, and I’m going to have to put a bit of thought into how I’m going to rescue them.

Towards the end of the session I did weaken a little, and just couldn’t resist painting in the elephant’s tusks. I finished by putting in a layer of white where the twig-like branches of the trees go through the foliage.  

Update – 17/05/19 – 21:34

I didn’t get a chance to work on the painting yesterday, but the plan for tonight’s session was to add a little colour to the white branches. I also wanted to start painting in the foliage to the far left and start laying down some layers of colour beneath the foliage. Well, I did some of that. First of all I painted in more of the base layer of light yellow underneath where the foliage was going. Then I started painting in more of the greens above the right hand tusk, working from light to dark.

I did try to do more work on the branches and on the tree trunks, which aren’t quite as pink as they were now. You can see in the last photo, which I took at the end of tonight’s session. I’ve painted a first layer of colour for the verge and the roadway at the bottom of the picture. I also put in the foliage between the elephant’s legs. It’s too early yet to have a view how the painting is going to turn out, but I’m pleased with the way that the tusk on the right stands out from the background now.