An Elephant a Day 2.0

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

Wildlife Trust of India

Sunday, 29 September 2013

Elephant No. 27: Painted Umbrella

A couple of weeks ago, on a rainy day, my friend Jacinthe Caron said I should make an elephant umbrella. I wasn't sure if that was possible, but when researching fabric paints a few days ago, I came across some images of painted umbrellas, and decided to give it a try.

Strangely enough, it had never occurred to me to paint an umbrella. I figured it would be too hard to find paints that were waterproof enough and flexible enough. Many fabric paints require heat-setting, which would be a problem unless I intended to dismantle my umbrella in order to iron the cover. I didn't want to do that, so I looked for paints that would cure on their own, and found these textile paints by Pebeo.

I also bought a black umbrella at a discount store for $5.00. I had intended to buy something lighter, but this was the only non-patterned umbrella I could find at this time of year.

I thought I'd better plan out my idea at least a little, so I made a sketch of what I thought my final umbrella might look like.

I sketched this lightly onto the surface of the opened umbrella with a white pastel pencil, then began painting.

Do not buy a black umbrella if you want this to be an easy job. I had visions of the fabric paint lying opaque on top of the nylon umbrella fabric. It didn't. In fact, the first two coats of white all but disappeared, leaving a sort of glossy shadow, but no real discernible elephant. I began to suspect that these weren't really paints at all, but goo that had to be slopped on thickly rather than brushed on.

I decided that maybe the "white" could serve as an undercoat and that the next coat of paint would be more opaque. Wrong. I used "pearl lilac" and ended up with an iridescent fly-eye blue. I didn't mind the blue, once I got used to it, but it was definitely a surprise.

This was not going particularly well, and I admit that I was beginning to be at a bit of a loss. While I tried to figure out what to do with this—other than wash the whole thing off and start over—I painted some greenery at the bottom, thinking I could maybe add flowers or something to distract from the rest of it.

Then I remembered that I had some dimensional fabric paint that I'd used on a pair of sneakers. The package had a nice range of colours, so I thought I'd see what I could do by squeezing these onto the surface. No more paintbrushes today, thank you very much.

I started by outlining the elephant in a loose, sketch-like way with the silver iridescent paint. I didn't mind this, so I went to work on the greenery next, adding petals to the flower stalks.

I had also added water drops above the elephants' trunks, which I didn't like, but it was too late to remove them, so I started adding confetti-like dots throughout the water droplets. I also scattered a few random coloured dots through the blank areas of the umbrella to tie things together.

As a final touch, I gave each elephant a small garland of flowers, to add a touch of colour to the elephants and make the design more cohesive.

In the end, I like my elephant umbrella well enough—although it's hard for me to love something that's so radically different from what I had in mind. It's also hard for me to love something that wasn't all that fun to make.

Now, however, that I've figured out what works and what doesn't when using fabric paints on an umbrella, I may make another one someday. Perhaps next time it rains in Ottawa in February.

Elephant Lore of the Day

Although it isn't true, as some sources suggest, that elephants get drunk on fermented marula fruit, they can get drunk. And they do like alcohol. Their taste for alcohol may be due to an inherent sweet tooth, given that most alcoholic drinks are loaded with sugar in one form or other.

In late 2012, in one of the biggest invasions of party animals ever seen, an entire herd of elephants bellied up to the bar in a small Indian village. Drawn out of the jungle by the smell of a strong local drink called Mahua, about 50 elephants trampled crops and homes on their way into town.

Their first stop was a shop that sold the beverage, which is made from the flowers of the mahua tree. In short order, they had consumed the shop's entire supply of 18 jugs. Clearly in a party mood, the elephants raided three homes near the shop before villagers were able to force them back into the jungle.

Once they were back in the jungle, forestry officials forced the elephants across a nearby river, making it more difficult for them to head back into town for another round.

Asian elephants in Bandipur National Park, India.
Photo: © Dr. Manoj C. Sindagi Photography
Source: http://www.manojcsindagi.in/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=862

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

Wildlife Trust of India

Saturday, 28 September 2013

Elephant No. 26: Jackson Pollock Elephant

I bought a jar of Golden's Clear Tar Gel a week ago, after seeing an online video about it. I liked the way it could be coloured and drizzled, so I thought it would be a great thing to use in making a Jackson Pollock-style elephant.

For those of you not familiar with Jackson Pollock's work, he was probably best known for his floor-sized canvases, onto which he dripped, drizzled and flung enamel house paint.

Jackson Pollock creating Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), ca. 1950.
Photo: © 1999 Estate of Hans Namuth
Source: http://www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/process2.shtm

Oddly enough, I discovered this morning that Clear Tar Gel was actually developed for the movie Pollock (2000), to imitate the paints he used in his large drip paintings.

I began by pouring tar gel into the six sections of my palette, then coloured each with a bit of acrylic paint. I intended to paint a relatively small piece today, mostly to avoid making a huge mess as I flung paint around.

As you can see, you don't need much paint to colour the gel. And don't be fooled by the lighter look of your pigment: the gel dries clear, leaving the original colour behind. I didn't realize this until after it dried, so I kept adding pigment.

The tar gel itself is acrylic-based, so you need to use dry or water-based pigments to colour it, rather than anything oil-based. My sole painting teacher—a well-known artist who lived in a permanently, er, altered state back then—once mixed oil and acrylic paint on his palette while demonstrating colour blending. His befuddlement was a wonder to behold as the paint essentially curdled before our eyes.

I began by dripping and drizzling the coloured medium onto a 9 x 12-inch (22.8 x 30.5 cm) canvas board. This wasn't nearly as easy as I'd hoped it would be. Unless you're virtually pouring the medium from a jar, it just doesn't have the "oomph" behind it to drizzle in thin threads. I used a heavily loaded paintbrush, but I was constantly fighting the medium's tendency to drop in large blobs. One technique that worked a little better was to touch the loaded brush to the canvas, then drag a filament of medium across the surface.

I think part of the problem is that this is an acrylic medium, and wants to dry relatively quickly. I probably shouldn't have mixed all the colours at once. I tried thinning the medium with water, but this didn't seem to make it noticeably thinner or looser.

The unfortunate side effect of having water anywhere in the vicinity was that I ended up with drops of water on the canvas itself, which made the colours bloom. Most of these were droplets left in the brush's ferrule (the metal bit that holds the bristles) after I removed it from my rinsing water. I quickly learned to wipe the brush as soon as I took it out of the water.

The other thing that happens is that the colours will bleed into one another. I had originally expected them to stay separate, but they have an obvious chemical affinity for one another. Essentially, the thicker the medium, the more likely the colours will blend.

I had originally intended to leave the background blank, but changed my mind when I remembered that Pollock's backgrounds were never blank. I did, however, avoid filling in the background as much as I'd filled in the elephant, to make the elephant stand out.

The tar gel is supposed to dry clear, so I wasn't sure if the colours would change once it was fully dry. I left it to dry for about six hours to see what would happen. At the end of six hours, the surface was still slightly tacky, but dry enough to touch. Full curing—particularly for thicker areas—needs 24 hour or more.

Because the gel dries clear, the colours were now more saturated. Everything was also much glossier than it had been when wet—and suddenly teeming with bubbles. These were mostly tiny, but I did end up with at least one larger bubble in every thick area. I'm hoping they might "gas off" and disappear the more the piece cures, but I'm not holding my breath.

Apparently you can avoid bubbles if you mix carefully and let the mixture sit for a few days in its sealed jar. Which would be fine if you wanted to use a full jar for each colour. As it was, I used only about an eighth of the jar—or one ounce (30 ml)—for this entire project.

This was an interesting exercise, but I can't say that I'm in love with either this style of painting, or this particular medium. I will probably use tar gel again for some other type of painting—I still have a nearly full jar, after all—but I think drizzle painting and I will probably never become close friends.

Elephant Lore of the Day

It's never a good idea to make an elephant mad. In 153 B.C., Appian reports that Romans had taken war elephants right up to the walls of a besieged town in Spain. Someone foolishly threw a large stone onto an elephant's head, which caused it to fly into a rage.

Uttering "a loud cry", the elephant began destroying everything in its path, "making no longer any distinction between friend and foe."

This, of course, set off all the other elephants, which "excited by his cries, all began to do the same, trampling the Romans underfoot, wounding them, and tossing them this way and that."

Appian solemnly concluded, "This is always the way with elephants when they are frightened. Then they take everyone for foes; wherefore some people call them the common enemy, on account of their fickleness." (Roman History, VI.46)

We know now that elephants are far more loyal than fickle; however, like any other animal, they will panic when threatened, their large size doing the rest.


Somewhat fanciful Renaissance depiction of Roman war elephants—fanciful, because although elephants are big, they couldn't have borne loads of superstructure and men this large. Source: http://parttimeclassicist.blogspot.ca/2012/11/in- gupta-empire-in-about-700ad-while.html

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)

Wildlife Trust of India

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

Friday, 27 September 2013

Elephant No. 25: Sunflower Stars

"Sunflower stars" sounds like something sparkly and pretty, but alas it's just a bunch of plastic things you snap together.

I bought this container of 36 pieces at the dollar store on a whim last week, with no idea how—or if—I could make a credible elephant from them. Note that these ones are called "Snowflake Building Blocks", but I don't care to speak of snow quite yet.

I started by snapping a bunch of pieces together for a body. From a certain angle, it looked a bit like an internal combustion engine, but at least it provided a solid core to work with.

After this, I snapped pieces on and off the body, cursed when the whole thing—except the body—collapsed into a pile, and generally wondered why this is a toy for children. Or maybe you need to be an actual child to work with these.

Eventually I figured out something that looked at least a little like an elephant, held my breath, and asked it to pose. This particular elephant declined to "work it" for the camera—which is just as well, given how likely it was to fall apart.

This was a relatively quick elephant to make—which is always a bonus—but I didn't find this particular snap-together toy as accommodating as I would have liked. On the other hand, it's colourful and reasonably cute. And it's not permanent, which is also a bonus.

Elephant Lore of the Day

Earlier this week, I told the story of Thiruvambadi, the festival elephant. In that post, I mentioned that he'd been purchased in 2002 for $60,000. Although good festival elephants are more expensive these days, they still can't beat the price commanded for a Richard Avedon photograph of elephants.

Photographer friend Neil Robertson sent me a note a couple of days ago about the photograph below, featuring two unnamed elephants and the model Dovima. Taken in 1955, the photograph sold at auction in November 2010 for a whopping $1,151,976, far exceeding its pre-sale estimate of $500,000–$800,000.

Ironic that an elephant is worth more in a fashion photograph than it is in real life.

For more on elephants in fashion, see the elephant lore in this post from my original Elephant a Day blog.

Dovima with Asian elephants, Cirque d'Hîver, Paris, 1955.
Photo: Richard Avedon
Source: http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/dovima-
with-the-elephants/

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)