African Elephant:

NATURAL HISTORY NOTE: This painting is going to be of a lone bull elephant. You will see that he has HUGE tusks! We saw this bull in Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania. There are many large tusked bulls in the crater - in fact they have the largest tusks anywhere in Africa. The interesting thing is that only bulls are in the crater itself. The females and calves don't migrate up and over the rim; it is too steep. So the bulls congregate together in the crater, then move outside of the crater when they are looking for females.

Elephants are interesting in many ways. For instance, they actually are walking on their tippy toes. That is what makes them so quiet as they move through the bush. The big padded feet house the toe bones which is what they are walking on (see sketch in lower left corner of sketch book photo).

When Jan gets the chance she does sketching in the field. Here Jan and James are watching an elephant in the water and Jan is doing some sketches. Sketches in sketchbook/journals aren't meant to be finished drawings, rather quick impressions of what's going on.

This is one of Jan's sketchbook/journals. Not only does she do sketches, but writes lots of natural history notes in them as well.

The far background is completed. The grasses have been blocked in. The masking materials have been removed from the elephant and the drawing has been transferred.

Here is a closeup of the underpainting for the skin of the elephant. It is done with the same off white paint that Jan uses to do under hair detail, but for the skin of the elephant she is creating texture. Remember the cellophane from the last painting of the rocks in the sheep painting? She has used that technique here some on the elephant's skin.

The unifying wash this time is more of a gray than the brown that Jan usually uses.

Jan apologizes that there really should have been another step in here, but she got so into the "zone" that she ended up finishing the painting without taking any other photos! This is the finished painting with the skin detailed out, the tusks completed and the grasses done. It's called BIG BULL and is acrylic 12 x 16".