Elephant No. 36: Trading Card

Today I thought I'd try making an elephant trading card, similar to the baseball and hockey cards my brothers and I collected as kids. I may try an artist trading card in the future, but for today I wanted to make a sports-style card.

I thought it would be interesting to use an actual elephant as the star of my trading card, so I chose Thiruvambadi. Thiruvambadi Sivasundar—to give him his full name—is a famous festival elephant in southern India. He is considered one of the handsomest of elephants, and even has his own fan club and music video. To read more, and see his video, you can check out the elephant lore in this previous blog post.

I found this photograph of Thiruvambadi to use for my card.

Thiruvambadi Sivasundar.
Source: http://www.hindu.com/2011/05/10/
stories/2011051060800300.htm

For the size of my card, I decided to go with the standard trading card size of 2.5 x 3.5 inches (6.3 x 8.9 cm). I cut out a couple of blanks from artist-quality bristol board. I only intended to make one card, but if I goofed it up, I'd have a spare.

I began by sketching the general layout of the card, using a couple of sports cards as my guide. They usually have some kind of border, a name in bold lettering, and maybe a year or some other kind of extra information.

I filled in the area allotted to the star's image with a stylized representation of Thiruvambadi, based on the photograph I'd chosen. In the end, I guess I was going for something that was a cross between a sports card and a superhero card. I also gave him the number "1", since this is my first-ever trading card.

When I was happy with the general look of everything, I went over the outlines with a permanent pigment liner, then heat-set it with a hair dryer. I always have trouble with lettering. I have nice handwriting, but my lettering always looks terrible. Oh well, this was another chance to practice.

I filled in everything with watercolour pencils. I used plain watercolour pencils rather than my favourite Inktense pencils, because this was a relatively small surface and I needed to be more precise than I can usually manage with the fatter Inktense pencils. The colour saturation isn't as good with regular watercolour pencils, and the coverage isn't as smooth, but I figured I could add more colour later, if need be.

I painted over everything with a moderately wet paintbrush. To give it a more graphic effect, I went over some of the lines with the pigment liner after it dried, and added some extra lines and shading.

I also filled in the back of the card with some general information about Thiruvambadi, and framed the information with some purple lines. Oddly enough, it was quite hard to find Thiruvambadi's vital statistics. I found his height, but not his weight, nor his age, nor anything else of interest. I did find things in a language that might be Malayalam, but it's not a language I know.

It's not perfect, but I quite like the final effect. The lettering displeases me, but the process was fun enough that I might just make more of these at some point.

Elephant Lore of the Day

Elephants are skilled at making their own tools to groom and scratch themselves, but there's clearly nothing like a readymade broom.

At the Forth Worth Zoo in Texas, keepers were giving one of their female Asian elephants her daily brushdown when she decided she could do a better job herself. Accepting the large push broom from her keeper, she happily brushed her forehead from top to bottom.

Asian elephant scrubs her head with a push broom, Fort Worth Zoo, Texas, 2013.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435431/Fort-Worth-Zoo-
Elephant-takes-brush-keeper-enjoy-good-scratch-head.html

Apparently deciding that this was a very nice tool to own, she refused to give it up, taking it back to her enclosure.

Mine! The elephant carts off its prize.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435431/Fort-Worth-Zoo-
Elephant-takes-brush-keeper-enjoy-good-scratch-head.html

The video below shows the elephant calmly grooming herself with the broom.

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Performing Animal Welfare Society

Zoocheck

Bring the Elephant Home

African Wildlife Foundation

Elephants Without Borders 

Save the Elephants

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)

Wildlife Trust of India

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

Elephant No. 18: Rubber-Cement Resist

I saw this technique on a Pinterest board, so I traced it to the original tutorial, which I found on the Columbus North High School page. To see the tutorial, click here.

I'm not very good with ink washes, so I feared this could be a total disaster. However, playing with rubber cement takes me back to my childhood, so I was game to try.

The first thing I had to do was make a sketch. I drew today's elephant from this photograph.

African elephant.
Source: http://www.hiren.info/desktop-wallpapers/animals-birds-
pictures/gray-elephant-1g

Because this technique requires a series of ever-darker washes of ink, I thought I should at least try to map out the darker areas. This was actually really difficult for me, because I normally do some of the darker bits first when I draw. This time I would have to work more or less in reverse.

The other thing is that whatever is left untouched by rubber cement will end up black. This meant that I also had to address the background. I hate drawing backgrounds.

I used regular rubber cement, which comes with a very clunky brush. It's great for slopping the stuff across wide areas, and even spreading it nice and thin. It's wretched for fine detail.

Since I didn't want to ruin a paintbrush, however, I decided I'd try using the big, fat brush, with toothpicks for finer details. I should have used a smaller brush that I didn't care about.

I began by putting rubber cement on the areas I wanted to leave white, let the glue dry until it was tacky to the touch, then coated the whole thing with a highly diluted wash of Chinese stick ink.

I could see right away where the darker areas were going to be. What I couldn't see anymore was my drawing. Upon reflection, I should have drawn it darker, and I should have made the various areas clearly defined, almost like a paint-by-number kit. It was too late, however, so I soldiered on.

After letting the first one dry, I painted on more rubber cement, this time tackling the next darkest areas, then the next darkest, and finally masking off everything but the very darkest parts. Each time, I let the rubber cement dry to the touch, and ensured that the ink was completely dry before adding another layer of rubber cement and ink.

I let the whole thing dry for a good hour or so this time, then began peeling off the rubber cement. I could have used a crepe block, but I don't know where mine is, so I used the pads of my thumbs. Use a crepe block.

This is what I ended up with. I didn't like that I'd left some areas too white, and that some weren't dark enough. On the other hand, the whole thing had a woodcut look that I didn't mind—and I really liked the brush strokes and speckles left behind by the much-maligned brush. But it lacked definition and finesse.

To rectify this, I got the bright idea of masking off a few more areas with rubber cement, and painting them over with a darkish wash of ink. Not sure I'd recommend this, unless you want a layering effect like the one below.

In the end, I found this an interesting experiment. I would definitely use a finer brush next time, and I'd probably pay a lot more attention to what should be dark and what should be light. I would also delineate things a little more clearly. One benefit of rubber cement is that it will remove pencil marks. I'd forgotten that.

For someone like me, this was a mind-bending exercise, mostly because I had to think backwards. It was also hard to come up with enough shades of ink. When I was finished, it suddenly occurred to me that I could have used colours instead. Maybe next time.

Elephant Lore of the Day

Kerala, India is known for its established elephant culture. Every temple has its own elephant, and some have as many as 60.

Many of the elephants become so famous that they have their own fan clubs and make wildly popular public appearances. In the August 16, 2013 edition of the New York Times, Rollo Romig wrote about the famous elephants of Kerala, and one of the culture's star attractions, Thiruvambadi Shivasundar.

Thiruvambadi is owned by a wealthy businessman named Sundar Menon, who bought him in 2002 for three million rupees, or about $60,000. This is apparently a bargain by today's prices—particularly since elephants can be a risky and temperamental investment.

Unlike many festival elephants, however, Thiruvambadi is fairly mellow, and has never killed anyone, even by accident. He is, however, rather spoiled, living a rock star sort of life—with some of the same potential pitfalls, if Thiruvamadi's love of brandy is anything to go by.

Thiruvambadi has even had a song written about him, and stars in his own Bollywood-style music video, which you can watch here.

Thiruvambadi Shivasundar enjoys a bath.
Photo: Brent Stirton, New York TimesSource: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/a-big-blingy-indian-
love-song-for-a-brandy-swigging-elephant/?_r=0

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Performing Animal Welfare Society

Zoocheck

Bring the Elephant Home

African Wildlife Foundation

Elephants Without Borders 

Save the Elephants

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)

Wildlife Trust of India

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