The Old Bull

Done another painting for the Cambridge Drawing Society spring exhibition. This exhibition has a selection committee - so I have to make sure that my submissions are eye-catching enough!

Have never done an elephant before, even though I have been to Africa on safari a number of times and taken numerous photographs. I suppose that previously I would think - how would I make a totally grey animal interesting? Well - that isn't a problem now, as I add the colours of the rainbow nowadays! Don't get me wrong, I carefully choose the inks I require for a particular painting and don't deviate from those - never going back into the box to add "just another colour" - it would be a recipe for disaster..... I use a tester page if necessary, to see how the colours work together once spritzed with water and mingle.

I don't think I have shown my initial workings before. I do a light sketch in pencil of my subject and then, mostly using tube of Schmincke Aqua watercolour masking fluid in blue. For those of you who haven't come across this - it is brilliant if you want to do continuous lines in masking fluid. I used to use the bottle of W&N masking fluid and of course there was always that nasty blob where there was a join. This does away with that and I get a nice smooth flow, because as long as you lightly press on the tube, then the masking fluid keeps on flowing out of the nozzle. I don't show it here, but I did then use the W&N masking fluid from the bottle to fill in the whole of the tusks - as it was imperative that the tusks remained white while I threw the acrylic inks at the paper!

"The Old Bull"

Acrylic ink on half imperial 525gsm Bockingford NOT watercolour paper

Obviously this paper was flooded with ink - so one of the major things with my technique is patience! The painting has to dry overnight without touching it. I sometimes have a number of boards on the go - all in a different stage of painting, but sometimes up to three covered in wet ink. I don't tend to do more than that, as my youngest dog - she of the beautiful long golden hair - likes coming upstairs and I have to keep everything out of her reach - a) because it is very wet and b) I don't want golden hair encased forever in the ink!

Once completely dry, I can then remove the masking fluid. This can take quite a while, as these inks are, of course, acrylic and therefore cover the masking fluid and make it rather difficult to find! I generally use transparent inks - which are easier, but sometimes there is a colour in all three ranges I use which just doesn't come in anything but opaque. This is the case with the cool grey. Had hoped my discovery of Liquitex and Schminke Aero acrylic inks would help me with this colour, but it appears that the FW range has the best light grey. However, it is much thicker ink and so sometimes rather difficult to remove the masking fluid from those sections.

Even with the Schmincke masking pen I can get areas of revealed white that are too big or uneven. This is when I come in with a dip pen and the same inks - sometimes knocking areas right back with a small watercolour brush. Note: wash the brush immediately afterwards, otherwise you can ruin your nice watercolour brushes!

When I did the tiger recently (see previous post), or the birds of prey etc last year, the eyes are really the most important feature. Get those right and you have a successful painting. This painting threw me a bit. Had an artist friend over when I had nearly finished it and asked her opinion. At the time I had done what was in the photograph - namely just dark areas for the eyes. I checked numerous photos of elephants and it was all the same - the eyes really don't feature much at all. However, with this painting we agreed I needed to do something, but not much. Again with previous paintings I would do the highlights in the eye with opaque white. FW inks do a good one - no good for mixing with other colours as it would turn those colours opaque too - Schmincke Aero do a transparent white for that purpose. Anyway, printed off a photo of the nearly completed work and had a couple of tries with colours. White was too dominant. Most of my colours are transparent, so didn't show up against the FW Purple Lake of the eyes. Then I remembered the opaque FW raw sienna. Haven't used that for ages, having discovered a transparent version with Schmincke, but always worth keeping these bottles, just in case they are useful....! A couple of very subtle lines on the ink dark eyes - hardly noticeable, but there and it really made a difference. 

At last - it was finished....

I am allowed to submit four paintings to the Drawing Society's exhibition this time - now have the tiger and the elephant definitely being submitted. Need two more dynamic ones and I'm there.

Off to the studio....