Elephants

I am thinking about making a Meander book as a Christmas present, containing paintings of photos my friend brought back from India.  The “pockets” need suitable decoration as well, so I thought Indian elephants might make an agreeable motif.  This is my first practice of that theme.

The first thing to say is that I actually enjoyed the process!  Thanks to all that drawing practice the basic sketches went down quickly and reasonably accurately – always a confidence builder.  I have limited my palette to Quinacridone Gold, Quinacridone Red and Indanthrene Blue which produced some wonderful mixes.  I think I need to be more bold in laying down colour =- some of the early washes were rather pasty!  But I am happy with these first attempts, and shall continue with more elephants just for fun.

However, I don’t think this motif will work for the project I have in mind.  Maybe more stylised images dressed overall may be more in keeping as a design.