Elephant Herd:

Jan has spent countless hours in the field in Africa, traveling to four countries in the past 10 years, sketching, painting, photographing and getting hands on experience to absorb the essence of each country so that she can more realistically depict Africa and it's wildlife in her paintings. This painting will be of a matriarchal herd of elephants at sunset with a baobab tree.

When Jan has the opportunity she enjoys doing field painting. Field painting is limited to 2-3 hours maximum as the sun will then have moved and the shadows change too much. Here Jan is working on a baobab tree field painting while on a private reserve in Zimbabwe with her scout "Trust". Trust wanted to be an artist, bringing small drawings on scraps of paper. At lunch Jan gave him drawing lessons, then for several years sent him art books and art supplies. He later named his daughter "Jan" and his son "Martin". Wonderful how you can touch someone's life. Unfortunately with all the trouble in Zimbabwe Jan has lost touch with the family.

Here Jan and James are standing in front of a large baobab in Tanzania. An old African legend is that the baobab grows "upside down" to hold up the African sky.

While Jan obviously enjoys painting big bull elephants, she also enjoys the matriarchal herds of cow elephants with the aunts, teenagers and babies. This complex society is intriguing. The babies are just plain irresistible! Here Jan gets to interact with a herd of orphaned elephant babies at an orphanage in Nairobi. Being able to go in with the babies is a opportunity rarely granted - but James arranged for this encounter as an anniversary present to Jan.

Here is the drawing done to scale that will be transferred to the painting surface.

Jan is creating the evening sky by applying multiple layers of color and smoothing with a foam rubber sponge. While many artists would use an airbrush for this, Jan does not use an airbrush, preferring the "kinetic energy" of the artist actually touching the painting. It is a very lengthy and time consuming technique but the depth and glow created by the layers of paint are worth the effort!

Here is the painting palette with all the colors Jan used to create the glowing sky.

The sky is completed, the background is started and the elephants and baobab have been blocked in in dark brown paint.

Jan uses a white artist paper to transfer her drawing to the painting surface. Here she has done that with the elephants and baobab tree.

The baobab is finished.

Some of the elephants have been mostly completed.

Here is the finished painting "EDGE OF EVENING" 10 x 20. This will be exhibited at Jan's one person show at FORBES MAGAZINE galleries March 21- May 3.