Elephant wip day 2

I only had another hour to spare on this today. I've been looking at painterly pastel techniques recently, using the pastel more like a brush, rather than trying to draw with them in the traditional sense. I started this painting by looking at the way the elephant breaks up its space. I've tried to look at the abstract shapes of the whole composition, rather than looking just at an elephant.
The colours I've used are bold, I'm trying to feel the form of the elephant, and capture the movement as it walks out of the composition towards you.
I've also had another little tinker with my last painting, so thought I'd share the final signed version with you.

Not quite a seal....Elephant version 2 Wip

I know I said I was drawing a seal next, and I definitely intend to soon, as it is a nice photo. However, I had one last look through my photos, and came across one that my Dad took when he was in South Africa. It grabbed my attention as its so different to my last drawing which was very gentle. The elephant has so much presence, and the light is fantastic. I previously mentioned I wanted a subject to test out my new pastelmat paper. The makers of this paper claim that multiple layers of pastel can be laid down without fixative (desirable as fixative dulls down some of the vibrancy of pastels). Well I think with the texture of the elephants skin, combined with the shadows from the bush on it, plus the bush itself, should do that! One thing I've noticed from today boy does it eat away your pastels. I used hard conte to block in a rough composition today, half my conte rapidily disappeared.

What's next then?

That's been my thought today. I've some new pastelmat paper I want to try, but need to decide upon a subject. I want it to be fairly complex to test out the pastelmat paper, that claims to be able to hold multiple layers of pastel, without the need for a fixative. I've still a gouache painting to complete, but the temptation to try my new paper has won over. Here are some of my considerations today, the peacock feather definitely a challenge, but I haven't recovered from my peacock oil painting that I did last year!



This photo makes me laugh, it looks like the dove is in disbelieve that a parakeet has come to dine with him, but I think not for this project! The hippo shot got me thinking to try to get lots of different texture, but I don't like the fact it was obviously taken in a zoo.



I have decided to use a photo that was taken by my father in the Antarctic. It shows a seal up close in its natural habitat. I'm not posting this photo, I want to keep the painting a suprise. I hope it turns out, there are some lovely textures to explore.

Deer in Richmond Park, finished

Well I've finally finished this, I think. Its been one of those stop start projects, I definitely lost my direction mid-way. I think it works okay now, probably not one of my better drawings, but it does bring back memories of all the snow in Richmond park.

A trip to London Zoo

We have had a lovely day at London Zoo. I took my camera, it still appears to work since being dragged around the petrol station forecourt. Today I was trying to get some different photos, not the obvious penguin, giraffe ones.





However there was one I couldn't resist taking, the meerkats looked like they were topping up their tans!

It's spot the difference time! WIP day7

Mmmm...I spent an hour or so on this today, I decided I wasn't happy with the shape of the deer's skull and muzzle. I'll leave it to you to decided if it was time well spent. One problem I do have is pastel overload on the background by the deer on the left of the picture by it's eye. I think I caused the problem by using charcoal pencil to shade behind the socket of the eye, which flattened the grain of the paper. I can't get the pastel to take on the surface in that area. My only thought at the moment is to roughen the area with a fine sandpaper, and hope not to mangle the paper.

Deer in Richmond Park, wip day 6

I'm slowly beginning to get there with this. I've spent an hour today on the background. The shadows have a blue/violet tone, but also a rosy tone appears on the snow, there is more to snow than white! Once I'm happy with the snow I will work the finer details of the hair on the edge of the deer. There are also tufts of grass I need to address.