Painted Elephants

I created these two new pieces for the Inshala festival while on my Cypress Hills residency.

I started with brush drawing with black Gesso on the primed support. I like this method, it's fast!

I added the brightest paint colours to the surface. It killed back all the wrinkles which I will revisit.

I used a plastic bag and really watery paint to texture over the skin surface to take back a bit of the colour and make the piece more homogenous.

I went in with the white and highlights, right out of the tube.

I went in with some line and neutral gray and began with some bright green in the eye.

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I started another on the same size canvas.

I threw down some texture before starting in on the second elephant head.

I drew in the elephant face quickly. I'm a bit attached to the plain black and white drawing, it looks kinda like an ink drawing.

I add the punchy neon acrylic colour as the elephant paint, it sits far on top visually so I will have to take it down like before.

Here is is after I apply a bluish grey and revisit some of the wrinkle lines. I went into the eyes with some sparkles.

 I am really happy with how these two new pieces turned out and how quickly they came together.