🐘 Elephants on the Plains

036 Elephants on the Plains

This project has been done in exactly the same way as my 'African Savannah' that I finished at the end of May and I have even used the same tree template I made then.  I am hoping that the 'African Savannah' piece will be sold in the Charity Sale at the Hobbycraft store in Newbury so I made a similar piece for my own collection or to sell elsewhere.  It was still experimental as I wanted to see how similar to my original I could get it.  Bearing in mind that I wanted to make it physically different everything else is pretty close.  If I do manage to sell the four that have been donated, and I hope I do, I could quite easily do them again for maybe other charities too.

So of course, the first thing to do here was the taping of the border and then the Sun.  We need to make sure that a piece of canvas that is sun-shaped is kept pure white so that it can stay the nice bright focal point of the piece.  It would be no good painting the sky and then trying to put white or yellow over it, as the orange and reds would just show through.  I used the same technique as last time drew around a 5p piece and carefully trimmed around it.  I then placed it on the bare canvas where the sun will be.

After painting in the sky using Violet, Red, Orange and Yellow paints (making sure of course that the brightest part of the sky was nearest to the dot) it was time to allow it to dry and then remove the dot.  It can be a little tricky to find the edge and also you don't want to scuff your beautiful sky.  I did end up doing that on this one and had to touch it up, but you just need to take a little care and have patience.  I still think using the corner of a craft knife works well.

On this piece I painted the outer edge of the circle Yellow and the rest was white.  I couldn't remember exactly what I did last time.  But comparing photos now, I painted it all white last time and I think it looks better that way too.

Next I got my templates ready.  The Tree was reused from the 'African Savannah' and I found a picture online of a Mother and Baby Elephant.  Perfect.

The picture above shows them taped into position ready to draw around.

And now it is time to remove the templates and fill in all the lines.  I used Winsor and Newton's Mars Black for this with a few drops of Daler Rowney Flow Enhancer mixed in.  This photo was taken while colouring it in.

🦒 Create your own African Savannah!

      

031 African Savannah

To create this project I used the following:

• A 8" x 8" Canvas Panel.  
• Acrylic Paints (Violet, Cadmium Yellow Hue, Mars Black, Brick Red and Titanium White).
• Masking Tape

1. First of all I prepped my Canvas Panel by mounting it onto a larger board with Masking Tape which will also leave a nice crisp, white edge to the picture when the tape is peeled away at the end.
2. I then needed to mask where the sun will be so you can find a sticky white dot to put in or do as I did as I didn't have any sticky white dots in my stationary drawer so I had to make one.  I took a piece of masking tape (measuring about an inch and a half long) and I stuck it on to a plastic board temporarily so that it would not lose it's sticky-ness.  I then drew around a 5 pence piece and carefully cut it out.  I then stuck this to my bare canvas (where the Sun will be).  Make sure the edge is pressed firmly down.  I positioned mine just off centre.
3. I then started to paint the background.  Try to line up the Yellow area around the Masking Tape Dot (This is really important as it will be the main focal point of the Picture).  I put a wash of Violet along the top, then I worked my way down, cleaning the brush when changing colours.  It would be fatal at this point to mix all these colours to make one all over grey colour.  That would not be a nice effect at all.  So working from the top, I used Violet, Brick Red, Cadmium Yellow Hue and Brick Red again.  Let this dry.
4. While the background was drying, I cleaned up my brushes, palette and refreshed the water.  
5. Acrylics dry pretty quickly but I left it for well over an hour as I had some jobs to do around the house.
6. Once it is dry it was now time to peel off the Masking Tape Sun Dot.  As it was stuck down pretty firmly I got the corner edge of my paper knife blade and gently lifted it up, slowly, as we want a nice clean white circle.  This should then expose the bare white canvas underneath.
7. I then got the Titanium White and a fine paintbrush and carefully painted the circle white.  I then waited for this to dry.
8. Next I got the Mars Black pigment and painted the plain at the bottom of the canvas.  For the Animals I used my usual technique.  I found some Giraffe silhouettes in a Google Image search online and printed them out.  Cut them out to make a template and stuck down with bits of tape and drew around them.
9. I then peeled them off and coloured them in Black.  I did the same for the tree too.  This was a little more awkward because of all the gaps between the branches.  I cut these out using a craft knife.  Some of the tree branches were hand drawn in and the canopy of the tree was created with a stiffer brush and using stabbing motions to create a leafy effect.
10. Remove masking tape from edges.  Picture is complete. 🙂