Thirty Days hath September - Day Twenty Three - Elephants

A wonderful workshop in the studio today, teaching a subject I hadn't really ever covered before and certainly not with the set of techniques that I used.

I am so lucky at the studio, not only do I have lovely, enthusiastic clients but my regulars are so welcoming to anyone who is new. We had Jean join us today, all the way from Exmoor and everyone made her feel so welcome, I do hope she enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed hers.

I know that I would usually share the project step by step but sadly I have to reserve the publication of that information for the time being as I may be writing it up for someone else. If they don't take me up on it then I promise I will share all the things that we did.

What I can tell you is that we used watercolour ground on to watercolour paper for the texture of the elephant and allowed our watercolour paints to run in to all the crevices to create the wrinkles. We didn't paint it in elephant colours of course, why on earth would we want to do that? Therefore I was able to use my favourite turquoises, violets and granulating blacks for the piece and although I wasn't very happy with it halfway through, I tried to practice what I preach, saw it through to the end and now I look back, I'm rather pleased.

What do you think? I think that my elephant painting still has a lot to learn but for a first attempt it's not too shabby. Have you painted this subject? How have you done it? I'd love to hear from you if you're willing to share and you are welcome to pop over to my Facebook page AliBoardArtist and post your creations on to my page. I will look forward to hearing from you. See you tomorrow for something VERY different!