Elephant No. 312: Printing with Bubble Wrap

Although I've tried printing with plastic wrap before, I've never tried printing with bubble wrap, so I thought I'd try it for today's elephant.

Bubble wrap was originally a brand name for a product produced by the Sealed Air Corporation of New Jersey. The first bubble wrap was actually an accident, discovered in 1957 during a failed attempt to create three-dimensional plastic wallpaper. Although inventors Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes were disappointed in the wallpaper, they did discover that it made excellent packing material, and in 1960 the Sealed Air Corporation was founded.

Bubble wrap is made of transparent plastic, with a series of evenly shaped air bubbles. The bubbles provide cushioning, making it a commonly used packaging material for fragile items. The bubbles come in different sizes, depending on the dimensions of the item being wrapped, although particularly delicate objects are often wrapped in multiple layers. The bubbles can even be made in novelty shapes, such as hearts.

Heart-shaped bubble wrap.
Source: http://www.cuckooforcoconuts.com/2010_06_01_archive.html

Because the bubbles make a noise when popped, bubble wrap is often used as a sort of toy or stress-reliever. Our obsession with bubble wrap has actually led to the creation of virtual bubble-wrap in the form of online games, and the Mugen Puchipuchi (literally "infinite pop pop"), an electronic toy that simulates the pop of bubble wrap.

The Mugen Puchi Puchi bubble wrap simulator. Some of them also speak
with the voice of various Japanese anime characters.
Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/japanese-bubble/

Bubble wrap has also made its way into the arts. People paint on it, cut it into shapes and print with it, use it in performance art, and create costumes and fashion with it. Best of all—should you be so inclined—on the last Monday in January you can celebrate Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day.

Bubble wrap dress by Kate Cusack.
Source: http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.ca/2010/09/saran-wrap-
wigs-dresses-by-kate-cusack.html

For today's elephant, I had a couple of sizes of bubble wrap—one with small bubbles, and one with large bubbles—graciously provided by my sister.

Rather than try to use it in large strips or sheets, I cut small squares of bubble wrap to use as mini-stamps. 

I started by painting a bit of red paint on one of the squares. I used full-strength acrylic paint so that it would print the bubbles clearly. If the paint was too wet, the bubbles became slightly smeary, and if I used watercolour or gouache, it dried out too quickly.

These were my first few impressions. I discovered early on that it was a good idea to paint only a few bubbles at a time. I also discovered that it was a good idea to pre-plan the pattern I wanted to print.

The technique I used was pretty simple: brush full-strength paint lightly onto the tops of a few bubbles, flip over onto the paper, press gently, then peel away. Once I got the hang of it, it was fairly easy, if slightly tedious.

I liked this well enough, although it was more impressionistic than I somehow thought it would be. Or maybe it's just that I've been painting a lot of realistic stuff lately. I added a few more colours, then decided I liked this baby elephant as it was.

Clearly, this is a very abstract process, and you more or less have to squint to see an elephant. It's kind of fun, but you have to be prepared to get something that's not terribly representational. My next elephant actually looked like bunches of grapes when I started, as you can see below.

I used a similar process as I had with the first elephant, painting a few bubbles at a time and imprinting them wherever I thought they'd look good. I had also discovered that each load of paint could imprint at least twice, and occasionally as much as four times, although obviously the paint was lighter with each subsequent impression. I also tried things like drawing thin lines through the middle of a series of bubbles to see if I could create lines rather than spheres.

At two hours for these two prints, I found this far more time-consuming than I had expected. It's easy enough to paint bubble wrap and slap it onto paper, but it's actually quite fussy to paint the bubble wrap in tiny, specific patterns, then place them where you think they'll work best. 

It was also more difficult than l expected. The bubbles can have a mind of their own in terms of how they print and, athough you can see through the bubble wrap, it's not as easy as you'd think to place the bubbles where you want them. As you can see from the pile of bubble-wrap squares below, I experimented quite a lot.

Although it took longer than I thought it would—or should—I enjoyed printing with bubble wrap. I don't think I'd rush to make an entire piece with bubble wrap again, but as a way of adding areas of texture to a larger work, I think it could be quite interesting.

Elephant Lore of the Day
I've already written about an elephant who liked to rip tents as a sort of bubble wrap, but I didn't realize that elephants also like to play with bubbles. 

Bubble entertainer Fan Yang is known for making the largest bubbles in the world, including one that was big enough to contain an elephant. In preparation for that feat, he spent a couple of weeks interacting with elephants at the Elephant Conservatory in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Part of his time was spent making bubbles, to see how elephants reacted to them.

Fan Yang creates a bubble around Tai the elephant at the Santa Ana
Discovery Center in California.
Source: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/139242-elephant-trapped-inside-soap-bubble

While Fan Yang knew, of course, that humans liked playing with bubbles, the responses of the elephants astonished him. All of the elephants reacted with delight, chasing after the large bubbles like small children. Noticing that the bubbles came out of a large bubble wand, they also tried repeatedly to blow on the wand in order to produce their own bubbles.

Similarly, zoos and elephant preserves have long been aware that elephants love bubbles. Bubbles are often included in elephant-enrichment programs, and bubble machines frequently appear on the wish lists for zoos and other facilities with elephants.

Elephants also like to blow bubbles with their trunks. Although this is not a common activity for elephants, baby elephants—both captive and in the wild—seem to take particular delight in blowing bubbles in the water, as seen in the video below.

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Elephant sanctuaries (this Wikipedia list allows you to click through to information

on a number of sanctuaries around the world)

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

Elephant No. 265: Anthotype

This is one of the more unusual printing techniques I've come across—although perhaps not that unusual for anyone who's ever made contact prints in a photography class.

An anthotype—from the Greek anthos (flower)—is created by using photosensitive emulsions created from plant material. A sheet of paper is coated with the emulsion, then light-blocking material such as a leaf, flower or silhouette is laid on top. The entire piece is then placed outside in the sun until the background bleaches out to a near-white, leaving the sun-blocking material as the design. You can also use this process with large-format negatives. Since I didn't have any appropriate negatives on hand, I decided to go the contact-print route.

Anthotype of lion statue from a negative by Jalo Porkalla.
This anthotype required an entire summer to develop under a Finnish sun.
Source: http://193.166.40.90/?cat=18

For millennia, dyes have been made from plant material such as leaves, twigs, fruits and vegetables. Some are more light-fast than others, bleaching out slowly, while some are so sensitive to light that they will disappear within minutes.

Invented by British scientist John Herschel in 1842, the anthotype was originally conceived as a photographic process for making images of flowers. It was ultimately abandoned as impractical and time-consuming, and is today used primarily in fine-art printing. Because they are so susceptible to the effects of light, anthotype images tend to be fragile and prone to fading. No one seems to have figured out how to fully arrest the fading process, although some plant materials are known to fade less readily than others.

Anthotype by yourmung.
Source: http://yourmung.deviantart.com/art/Anthotype-00-190296364

The colour of the flower or plant is often the colour that you'll get in the final print. Some plants, however, will yield very different colours. For example, lilacs result in pinky browns, rather than mauve, and my own experiment today resulted in a light lavender, despite the fact that I started out with a rich, dark burgundy. This is partly due to the action of the sun on certain pigments, fading out some, while retaining others.

There are as many variations in tincture as there are plants in the garden. Some plants also react better with than water. Popular flowers include poppies, peonies and violets. Cabbage and grasses are also supposed to be good. For an excellent description of the process by anthotype expert Malin Fabbri, click here.

The method is relatively straightforward:

1. Crush plant material with a mortar and pestle, or in a blender if quantities are large.

2. Add distilled water, denatured alcohol, or even vodka. The thicker the mixture, the darker the background.

3. Strain mixture through cheesecloth, a fine strainer or a coffee filter.

4. Paint a piece of heavy paper—such as watercolour paper—with the mixture.

5. Let paper dry in a dark place—or it will start to fade. You can also speed up the drying process with a hairdryer.

6. Arrange leaves, silhouettes or whatever on the dry paper.

7. Place in bright sun. Check periodically until background fades to white, or as light as you want it.

There was no comprehensive online source listing plant materials, but I saw some pretty prints using blueberries, so I decided to try that. The main issue with this process is how sensitive the emulsion is to light. Some emulsions will fade almost immediately when placed in the sun. Others take days or even weeks. The sun is very hot and bright here today, so I decided to take my chances.

I started by grinding a few blueberries and a couple of blackberries with a mortar and pestle. I mixed this with distilled water, which is supposedly the best liquid for maintaining the colour of the original material.

I then strained the emulsion through a fine strainer to remove most of the pulp. I wanted to keep some of the specks of plant material to add texture to the paper, so I opted for a fine mesh rather than cheesecloth or a coffee filter.

Once I had a nice emulsion, I painted it onto a piece of medium-weight watercolour paper. You need a relatively sturdy paper for this process, so that it will stand up to the tincture, as well as to the trauma of sitting in sun for hours or days.

While my paper was drying in a darkened room, I cut out an elephant silhouette. I used black bristol board for this, thinking that a dark colour would be less likely to allow light to shine through.

The paper dried quickly, so I was ready to go in about an hour or so. It dried a much bluer colour than the original emulsion, but that was okay with me.

I placed my sihouette on the paper, and took it outside to let it sit for a few hours. I chose the brightest part of my yard, where the sun is likely to shine for most of the day. It was about 12:30 in the afternoon when I placed it outside.

Nearly six hours later, the background had faded enough that I was okay with it. It hadn't faded to white, but it was about as good as it was going to get within a single day. I peeked under the trunk to check it before disassembling everything, and there was enough contrast to show where the silhouette had been. The sun sneaked under the top edges of the crown because the paper curled away just a bit, despite being weighted down. Most serious anthotypers apparently use photographic printing frames for something like this. For artist Jalo Porkkala's set-up, click here.

With some emulsions, apparently they need to be left for days or weeks to fade properly, and berries may be one of these. I was a bit disappointed in the final image, but I guess you take what you get when you only have a day's worth of sun to play with. I was also a bit disappointed in the darkness of the original colour on the paper. Supposedly you can get vibrant colours with very few flower petals, so several berries should have been fairly dark. Oh well.

I was intrigued enough by this process that I will probably try it again at some point, with different types of flowers and leaves. I may even try with some kind of large-format negative next time. And several days' worth of sun.

Elephant Lore of the Day
In the late 1990s, rangers in South Africa's Pilanesberg Park discovered a disturbing trend. For years, rangers had been trying to protect the endangered white rhinoceros, which was suddenly being attacked and killed by unknown assailants.

Because the rhino horns had been left with the bodies, they knew it wasn't the work of poachers. Instead, it soon became apparent that a group of elephant juvenile delinquents had taken to attacking and killing the Park's rhinoceroses.

This is highly unusual behaviour among properly socialized elephants. Unfortunately, this particular group had grown up without any male role models, and had no idea what appropriate elephant behaviour might be.

The problem dated back to a major elephant cull some 20 years earlier. In South Africa's Kruger National Park, elephant populations had grown out of hand. At the time, there was no way of relocating large adult elephants, so a decision was made to kill the adults and save the babies. The babies were then transported to other parks, such as Pilanesberg. Although the supervising veterinarian at the time worried that the young elephants might not adjust without adult supervision, there was no other option.

The net result was an entire generation of traumatized orphaned elephants, thrown together without any adults to show them how to behave. Elephants learn from one another, and knowledge is passed down from generation to generation, making the cull nothing short of catastrophic. Years later, the orphans had essentially developed into troubled teens with raging hormones. In elephants, raging hormones lead to murderous behaviour, leading in turn to the killing of rhinos.

Park rangers began photographing the suspects and tracking them. Not only were the elephants attacking and killing rhinos, but they also became increasingly aggressive towards tourist vehicles. Worst of all was an elephant named Mafuta. Mafuta became leader of the difficult herd, essentially turning them into an unmanageable street gang, with himself as the ringleader. Mafuta was so bad that, if distracted from attacking a rhino, he would fly into a rage if the rhino escaped, and would return to attack the same rhino several weeks later.

Rangers worried that they would have to shoot the elephants, but wanted to avoid killing them if there was any other way. They hit upon a solution that worked surprisingly well: bring in some even larger bull elephants.

No one had ever transported fully-grown adult elephants before, but by 1998, rangers at Kruger National Park had brought some fully grown male elephants to Pilanesberg Park. The bigger, older elephants quickly established a pecking order, putting the younger elephants in their place, which also has the effect of reducing a younger elephant's hormone levels. As one of the rangers put it, it was like suddenly confronting a group of out-of-control teenagers with their fathers.

The juvenile delinquents seem to have understood the message. Since the arrival of the adult elephants, not a single rhino has been killed by an elephant.

Male elephant and rhino, South Africa, 2011.
Source: http://blog.malamala.com/index.php/2011/01/december-game-report/
rhino-and-elephant/

 

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Elephant sanctuaries (this Wikipedia list allows you to click through to information

on a number of sanctuaries around the world)

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

Elephant No. 210: Printing with Plastic Wrap

I needed something simple today, so I thought I'd try printing with plastic wrap. I've never tried this before, and didn't even know if it was an actual technique, but I thought it might be interesting.

The material used in most early plastic wrap—saran, or polyvinylindene chloride (PVDC)—was discovered by accident in 1933. Ralph Wiley, a college student at Dow Chemical in Michigan, U.S.A., was tasked with cleaning the glassware used in developing a dry-cleaning solution. One of the beakers, however, wouldn't scrub clean, no matter what he tried. He dubbed the coating "eonite", after an indesctructible substance in the Little Orphan Annie comic strip.

Dow researchers analyzed the substance, and by 1939 Wiley's boss John Reilly and his team had developed a greasy, dark green film they called "Saran"—named for John Reilly's wife and daughter, Sarah and Ann. Virtually impermeable to water and oxygen, the original material was sprayed on fighter planes during the Second World War to prevent damage from sea spray, and used in automobile upholstery.

Saran plastic was once used in the automotive industry.
Source: http://tatteredandlostephemera.blogspot.ca/2011/05/saran-plastic-seat-covers.html

Following the Second World War, Dow got rid of Saran's green colour and unpleasant smell and developed a way of extruding the material into thin, flexible sheets. By 1949, an early form of Saran wrap was available for commercial use, followed by a food-grade product in 1953.

Interestingly, PVDC was also developed into ventilated insoles for tropical combat boots. The first PVDC insoles were used in 1942, and remained a staple of American military gear until the mid-1970s, when they were replaced by a form of urethane. The British Army, however, continues to use Saran insoles in its boots. Saran is also used to this day for high-quality doll hair, which is valued by collectors for its softness, shine, and ability to hold style and curl.

Today, plastic wrap is made either of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) or LDPE (low-density polyethylene). The name "saran", although originally a trade name, is often used as a generic description. Similarly, plastic wrap is known in Australia by the generic "glad wrap", also originally a trade name. Other common names for the material in various parts of the world are "cling film", "cling wrap" and "food wrap".

As an art medium, plastic wrap is sometimes used to give textures to walls and other surfaces, by balling up plastic wrap, dipping it in paint and dabbing it across the surface. Another way of using plastic wrap appears to involve covering a surface with paint, placing a sheet of plastic wrap on top, then removing the plastic to create a random design. I decided to try something like the first option, using it to create a representational image rather than a simple textured background.

For today's elephant, I used a sheet of artist-quality bristol board, some acrylic paints, and a small piece of plastic wrap.

The method I chose was simple: wad up the plastic wrap, dab it into some paint, remove a bit of the paint by stamping it a couple of times into the palette, then print a design on paper.

I didn't bother drawing anything ahead of time, deciding I'd rather wing it and see what the technique produced on its own. The photograph below shows my first daubs with purple. It looks a little like sponge painting, but has a much softer edge.

After this, I added red:

Then I more or less forgot to photograph the process, but the two photographs below show what the palette and plastic looked like when I was finished with the first elephant. Because of the type of design I was creating, I didn't remove paint from the plastic before dipping it into another colour. To a certain extent, most of the paint comes off when you stamp it into the paper anyway.

And this is what the first elephant looked like when I was done:

This had only taken me about ten minutes, so I decided to make another one. I totally forgot to photograph the process for the second one, but the photographs below show some details of the paint. To create finer lines, as in the trunk, I used the side of my little wad of plastic.

I quite enjoyed the process, and I liked the effect much more than sponge-painting. Because the plastic wrap doesn't absorb the paint, the colours hit the paper in a more liquid state, and are more saturated as a result. It was also very easy—which is always good, particularly on a hectic day.

Elephant Lore of the Day
This slightly crazy—and very sad—story comes from the heyday of LSD experimentation on humans and animals. In 1962, three men at the University of Oklahoma decided to inject an Asian bull elephant with LSD, hoping to induce musth. Musth is a naturally occurring condition during which male elephants experience a spike in sex hormones, making them violent, aggressive and uncontrollable.

Tusko was a relatively small bull elephant weighing a mere 3.2 tonnes (7,000 lbs). Five minutes after he was shot in the right haunch with a massive 297-mg dose of LSD, Tusko trumpeted wildly, collapsed, and went into convulsions. Twenty minutes after the initial injection, the team administered thorazine in an attempt to help Tusko. Tusko remained in distress. An hour later, in a further attempt to revive Tusko, he was injected with pentobarbital sodium, this time directly into a vein. He died a short time later.

Following Tusko's death, controversy arose over the way in which the experiment had been conducted, as well as the very fact of attempting such an experiment in the first place. For one thing, the LSD dose was massive, based on the obviously mistaken assumption that an elephant would be resistant to the drug's effects. In fact, a more appropriate dose to induce an LSD "trip" in an elephant would have been 9 mg—which is nowhere near the 297 mg Tusko received. In addition, the weird cocktail of drugs administered to revive Tusko—which may have included others not recorded—had only made the poor creature's distress even worse.

The lead scientist in the experiement, 29-year-old Dr. Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West, was chairman of the Department of the University of Oklahoma at the time, and was known for his experiments with LSD. An unsubtantiated rumour suggested that he had ingested LSD himself shortly before injecting Tusko, and may have been under the influence the whole time. Even more bizarrely, West later issued a report advancing his "discovery" that LSD could be used as an effective means of culling of elephant herds in Africa.

West also used the notoriety surrounding the experiment as a means of ingratiating himself with the LSD subculture of the 1960s. Even as late as the 1990s, he was trading on his reputation as the man who had killed an elephant with LSD, joking about how the experiment had allowed him—a nerdy scientist with a crewcut—entrée into the world of hippie artists and psychedelia.

It was a strange experiment for a man who otherwise seems to have had a strong social conscience. West was active in the civil rights movement, and was the first white psychiatrist to testify for Black prisoners in South Africa during early attempts to end apartheid.

Little else is known about the unfortunate Tusko. Although he was billed as "the pride of the Oklahoma Zoo" at the time of the experiment, subjecting him to such an experiment seems highly risky for such a valuable animal.

Rama, a male Asian elephant at the Oregon Zoo.
Source: http://oregonzoo.smugmug.com/Animals/Oregon-Zoo-Photos/3268430_
6T56N7/181132214_rDCU5#!i=181132214&k=rDCU5

To Support Elephant Welfare
World Wildlife Fund
World Society for the Protection of Animals
Elephant sanctuaries (this Wikipedia list allows you to click through to information
on a number of sanctuaries around the world)
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)

Elephant No. 202: Fingerprints

It's the weekend and I wanted to do something relatively mindless, so I thought I'd try making an elephant using nothing but fingerprints. I've actually never tried producing something with multiple fingerprints, so this could be interesting.

A fingerprint is the impression left by the ridges in a finger—normally human, but also possible in some other species. Fingerprints are normally created by the natural secretions from sweat glands in the hand. They can also result from impressions left in soft materials such as clay, and can be produced by artificial means such as ink.

The art of fingerprint identification is known as dactyloscopy (literally "hand print identification"), and involves a comparison of the impressions of finger ridges. No two impressions are ever identical, even when made by the same individual, due to subtle alterations in hand pressure each time. As a result, modern fingerprint identification requires experts and highly sophisticated tools.

Typical fingerprint impression.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:
Fingerprintforcriminologystubs2.png

There three primary types of prints used for identification at a crime scene. Chief among these is a "latent print", which is the chance impression of finger ridges on an object. "Latent prints" are invisible to the naked eye, and usually require powder, chemical methods or special light sources in order to be revealed. "Patent prints" are those that can be seen without help, such as impressions made with ink, paint, dirt or even blood. "Plastic prints" are those that leave a visible impression in materials such as window putty, mud, clay or even thick grease or paint.

Fingerprints were used as signatures on clay tablets as far back as the second millennium B.C. in Babylon, and by 246 B.C., Chinese officials were pressing their fingerprints into clay document seals. With the advent of silk and paper in China, handprints were added to the paper itself. As early as A.D. 300, fingerprints and handprints appear to have served as a form of legal proof across Asia—likely more in terms of finger and hand size and obvious scars, rather than the minute detail required as legal proof today.

In 1684, English physician Nehemiah Grew published the first scientific paper describing the ridge structure of the skin on fingers and palms. A year later, anatomy books published by Dutch physician Govard Bidloo and Italian physician Marcello Malpighi featured illustrations showing a recognizable ridge structure on fingers. By 1788, German anatomist John Christoph Andreas Mayer had recognized that fingerprints are unique to each person.

In 1823, Czech anatomy professor Jan Evangelista Purkinje was the first to discuss individual fingerprint patters, although he did not mention using these to identify people. In 1853, German anatomist Georg von Meissner  studied the ridges in fingers, but also took it no further. 

Five years later, however, the first formal fingerprinting was initiated in India. By 1877, Sir William James Herschel had established the use of fingerprints on contracts and deeds as extra proof of legality, and he registered the fingerprints of government pensioners to ensure that relatives did not continue to collect money after the pensioner's death. He also fingerprinted prisoners upon sentencing.

Early fingerprint and handprint exemplar taken by William Herschel, 1859–1860.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fingerprints_taken_by_
William_James_Herschel_1859-1860.jpg

In 1880, the Scottish surgeon Dr. Henry Faulds, then working in a Tokyo hospital, published his first paper on fingerprinting, established the first true fingerprint classification, and managed to identify fingerprints left on a vial. When he returned to England in 1886, he offered his research to London's Metropolitan Police, but his work was ignored. 

Although other people continued to work on fingerprinting as a means of identification, it wasn't until 1892 that the world's first fingerprint bureau was established. Established in Argentina by Buenos Aires chief of police, Juan Vucetich, fingerprinting was used to solve a murder that same year by an Inspector Alvarez, who was a colleague of Vucetich. 

By 1897, a fingerprint bureau had also been established in Calcutta, India. Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose, who worked for the bureau, are credited with the development of a fingerprint system ultimately named after their supervisor, Sir Edward Richard Henry, who also made several improvements. The Henry Classification System has since become the standard fingerprint classification in most English-speaking countries. The two other popular classification systems are the Roscher system, which was developed in Germany and is used in Germany and Japan; and the Vucetich system, which is used throughout South America.

These systems classify fingerprints based on patterns such as arch, loop and whorl, along with more complex sub-patterns such as "tented arch", "radial loop" and "accidental whorl". There are even exotic names for some patterns such as "peacock's eye". 

There are a few peculiarities in fingerprints as well. Children's latent prints, for example, disappear much more quickly than those of adults. This is attributed to a lack of the types of waxy oils that become present after puberty. Fingerprints can also be used to detect drugs and other compounds contained in skin secretions, such as tobacco, coffee and cannabis. 

Some people actually have no fingerprints. The rare medical conditions adermatoglyphia, and ectodermal dysplasia, result in completely smooth fingertips. Even stranger, the anti-cancer medication capecitabine can cause the loss of fingerprints. Some people have their fingerprints permanently erased, either through plastic surgery, burning, or acid, although these extreme methods are primarily used by criminals to reduce their chances of conviction. The gangster John Dillinger famously tried—and failed—to burn off his fingerprints with acid.

A few other animals, such as primates, have unique fingerprints as well. Interestingly, one study has found that the fingerprints of a human and a koala are virtually indistinguishable under an electron microscope.

For today's elephant, I decided to pour a bunch of paints onto a palette and simply play at making an elephant using nothing but fingerprints. I used a pad of inexpensive sketchpad paper and acrylic paint for this little exercise.

I used the three primary colours—blue, yellow and red—and the three secondary colours—green, orange and purple—pouring a small amount of paint into the different compartments of my palette. To make the fingerprints, I simply dipped a finger in the paint, patted it a bit in the central well of my palette, and stamped it into the paper.

The method was very simple. I wet my finger with paint, removed any globby excess before I hit the paper, then stamped fingerprints wherever they looked good to me. I didn't pay much attention to getting perfect fingerprints, as you will see below. A few things I noticed as I went along:

1. The first couple of finger impressions will be roundish, but as you continue, the paint on the outside edges of your finger will form interesting lines. I used my fingers more or less as rubber stamps, rather than smearing as I would if I were fingerpainting.

2. Layering is key, and will allow you to produce all kinds of interesting effects. Colour also helps in this, as the use of complementary colours—red with green, blue with orange, yellow with purple—causes a sort of optical vibration, which makes the colours pop a bit more.

3. Leaving some white space also helps with the modelling, although I also liked the areas where I pretty much saturated things with paint.

4. I didn't bother to wipe my fingers between colours, as the acrylic dried so fast that it hardly mattered. I also liked the effect I got when colours were slightly blended.

5. The easiest fingers to use are the index finger (obviously), the middle finger, and the baby finger. I didn't use my thumb even once for any of these, and I only used my ring finger when I wanted an unsullied colour like bright yellow.

I made four of these, but rather than describe each one, I'll simply show the various stages for each—at least those that I remembered to photograph. There are also a few detail shots in here to give you an idea of what the fingerprints looked like at various stages.

I apologize in advance for the changing colour of the paper. It's a very weird colour to photograph, as it has both green and pink undertones. I concentrated on making the paint colours more or less true to what they look like in real life, but sometimes that made the paper colour go wonky.

Elephant One

 

 

Elephant Two

 

Elephant Three

Elephant Four

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was a very easy activity, and only took about an hour for all four paintings. My original thought had been to make precise thumbprints, then draw around them, but this was much more fun—and it's definitely something I'm adding to my repertoire.

Elephant Lore of the Day 
Although elephants aren't fingerprinted, there are many ways to identify specific individuals. An elephant's ears are the most common means of identification, as each ear is highly unique. Not only is the structure of veins and ridges different for each elephant, but all elephants generally bear specific scars and tears in their ears.

Elephant footprints are also highly unique. Although they don't have the whorls and ridges that we do, they do have specific ridges, cracks and fissures that people can use to track an individual elephant. 

Many people also identify elephants by their tusks, which are also quite unique from elephant to elephant. Some elephants have tusks of different lengths, tusks that may have been broken or cracked, tusks that are overly curled or turned in, and so forth.

Identification of elephants by the above three means is photographic, rather than by direct inky contact. In addition, as a way of tracking individual elephants and stepping up the fight against poaching, some countries are beginning to apply DNA fingerprinting to both captive and wild elephants. This is often done, oddly enough, using elephant dung as the sample. DNA fingerprinting of elephants not only identifies the elephant itself, but also its tusks—which may one day lead to an ability to track down and prosecute those involved in the illicit ivory trade.

Back of an African elephant's ear, Kruger National Park, South Africa, 2008.
This elephant would be easy to identify by its ear, as it has many distinctive injuries.
Photo: Terry Richard
Source: http://blog.oregonlive.com/terryrichard/2008/02/kruger_national_park.html

 

 

To Support Elephant Welfare
World Wildlife Fund
World Society for the Protection of Animals
Elephant sanctuaries (this Wikipedia list allows you to click through to information
on a number of sanctuaries around the world)
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)