Elephant No. 54: Haiku

Although the focus of this blog has been on visuals, I don't want to neglect the literary side of things. So today, I thought I'd try haiku.

When I worked for one of Canada's national museums some years ago, two colleagues and I would amuse ourselves around the holidays by making up demented Christmas-themed haiku. In the wrong hands, the normally serene haiku format lends itself surprisingly well to idiocy.

Haiku derives from a longer form of court poetry called tanka. Tanka dates from the ninth century A.D., and was structured in five-line stanzas with a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure. Tanka were often written in long, linked strings, with one author taking the first three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables, a second author taking the next 7 and 7 syllables, and so on. 

The first part of these poems was called the hokku or "starting verse", and usually set the tone for the rest of the poem. The authors of hokku were often greatly admired for their artistry by their fellow poets, and it is from hokku that the word "haiku" is derived.

Beginning in the seventeenth century, haiku were separated out from the longer tanka. By the nineteenth century, haiku were being written and read as stand-alone poems.

Haiku is considered both a poetic form and a way of viewing and experiencing the world. However, haiku is supposed to evoke, not only the physical world, but also something more esoteric and ephemeral. These qualities may be largely due to the influence of Basho and other seventeenth-century poets, who broke free of the rigid conventions of court poetry, opting for a lighter style rooted in their observations of the natural world.

Basho Composing a HaikuSugiyama Sanpû (1647–1732)
Source: http://www.lowdensitylifestyle.com/the-masters-of-enlightenment-basho/

The earliest westerner to have written haiku was likely Hendrik Doeff, the Dutch commissioner to Nagasaki in the early nineteenth century. Although Doeff had a reasonable feel for the principles of classical haiku, the form was poorly understood in the West until well into the twentieth century.

Several Japanese poets tried to interest American and European counterparts in writing haiku. Outside of the notable efforts of poets such as Ezra Pound, however, it was not until the late 1930s that the form took hold. Even then, North American poets often ignored the concept of a 5-7-5 syllable structure, interpreting haiku as simply a form of poetry with a minimal number of very carefully chosen words.

In addition to the 5-7-5-syllable structure, there are a number of other important concepts in writing haiku:

1. Take your inspiration from the natural world. If you see something that you wish others could see or experience, it's probably a good topic for haiku.

2. Use words related to one of the four seasons. Japanese haiku include a kigo or season word. Season words usually relate to concepts such as falling leaves, cherry blossoms, cold, snow, death, warmth, decay—in other words, anything evocative of one of the seasons.

3. Include a contrast or comparison. Most haiku have one idea in the first two lines, with a quick switch to something else for the last line. Crafting two concepts that contrast but work together is said to be the hardest part of writing haiku.

4. Use sensory descriptions more than anything else, since haiku is based on the five senses.

Although Japanese haiku is based on a 5-7-5 syllable structure, the Japanese sound-based syllable is not the same as what we consider a syllable in the West. By some reckonings, a 17-syllable Japanese haiku would work out to 12 syllables in English.

Be that as it may, I'm going to use the traditional 5-7-5 line structure. And I don't think I'll even try to be esoteric or seasonal about elephants, because I'll only embarrass myself. Besides, stupid haiku is way more fun. 

So here goes:

Make an elephant

Mad and you will have trampled

Crops and huts and goats.

Elephants hate to

Wear party hats and ruffles.

It makes them ashamed.

Elephants don't do 
Ikebana, for lack of
Opposable thumbs.

Elephants trumpet 
And run mad in streets if dressed

In silly outfits.

Elephants can walk

A tightrope, but wonder why
It's necessary.

The elephant called

Dumbo could fly with big ears.

I require a jet.

Writing ridiculous haiku is relatively easy, although it can sometimes be difficult to rassle the right number of syllables into a coherent thought. Or perhaps not so coherent in my case.

Elephant Lore of the Day 

There have been many poems written about elephants over the years, many of which fall into the realm of silly but charming doggerel. One of my favourites was written by Laura Howe Richards (1850–1943). 

Laura Richards was a prolific author, writing more than 90 books, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of her mother Julia Ward Howe, writer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Her children's nonsense poem Eletelephony has been reproduced many times over the years, and I remember learning it from my mother when I was quite small. 

Eletelephony 
Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)
Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

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

Elephant No. 53: Glass Etching

For today's elephant, I thought I'd do acid etching on glass.

Although I've tried this on a small scale a couple of times before, today's research tells me that I've been essentially dicing with death. Apparently I'd be much safer using abrasives instead. However, given a choice between slathering on a small amount of etching cream, or spraying the room with a fine slurry of water, oil, abrasives and glass particles, I'll stick with the etching cream for now.

Glass-etching creams—readily available at art and hobby stores—contain fluoride compounds such as sodium fluoride and hydrogen fluoride, the latter of which is particularly dangerous. This particular brand contains a diluted mixture of barium sulphate, sulphuric acid, sodium bifluoride and ammonium bifluoride. Yikes.

The technique is very simple—and in my experience, not at all dangerous, unless you get the acid on your skin. Since the cream is applied with a brush, you have to be pretty klutzy to get it on your skin. Not that I don't sometimes fit into this category—but I'm more careful when dealing with things that might hurt me.

The first thing to do is find a piece of glass you want to etch. I chose this drinking glass, which I bought for $1.29 at a discount store.

Next, draw something you can use as a stencil, bearing in mind the size of the glass surface, any decoration already on the glass, and so forth. If you feel particularly confident, you can paint etching cream directly on the glass with no stencil.

Once you've drawn a design you like, transfer it to a sheet of peel-and-stick plastic. It needs to be plastic rather than something like paper labels or masking tape, because plastic is more resistant to the etching cream. I wanted elephants on two sides of the glass, so I made two identical stencils.

Cut out the design, remembering that the surface will etch wherever there is no plastic.

Peel off the backing and stick the design carefully to your clean, dry surface. Don't worry about bubbles unless they deform the design.

Paint on etching cream. I have no idea why this is brown (it's supposed to be white), but I tested it on the bottom of a jar first, and it still seems to do what it's supposed to.

Wait five to ten minutes for the etching cream to do its work. Wash off cream and remove stencil. In my limited experience, by the way, it makes no difference to the depth of the etching if you leave the cream on longer. I did the elephant on one side, washed it, then flipped it around to do the other.

This was virtually impossible to photograph this without putting a piece of cardboard inside. Even then it wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done, but you get the general idea.

I found it a bit plain with just the silhouette elephants, so I added points to the tops of the crowns with a fine brush, as well as some random polka dots all the way around.

Although I don't like the fiddly work of making tiny stencils, I do like this technique a lot. It's an easy way to dress up plain glassware, and this pretty little elephant glass will be perfect for my morning juice.

Elephant Lore of the Day
One of the world's most famous elephants was Jumbo. Born in 1861 in Mali, West Africa, Jumbo was first imported to a small Paris zoo. In 1865, he was transferred to the London Zoo, where he became a popular attraction, often giving rides to children. It was here that he was also given his name, which is a variation on either the Swahili word jumbe, which means "chief" or jambo, which means "hello".

In 1882, Jumbo was sold to the Barnum & Bailey Circus for the then-exorbitant sum of $10,000. When P.T. Barnum first offered to buy the elephant, 100,000 British schoolchildren wrote to Queen Victoria, begging her to keep Jumbo in Britain. A series of sheet music covers for the music-hall song "Why Part with Jumbo?" were also produced in 1882, depicting children visiting the zoo and riding on Jumbo's back.

Source: http://virtualvictorian.blogspot.com/
2010/06/story-of-jumbo-elephant.html

Jumbo was indeed a very big elephant. By the time of his death, he was claimed to measure four metres (13.1 feet) in height, and weighed 5.9 tonnes (13,000 pounds). During his lifetime, his size would make his name synonymous with anything large—a trend that continues to this day.

Jumbo's arrival in America.
Source: http://virtualvictorian.blogspot.com/
2010/06/story-of-jumbo-elephant.html

Sadly, Jumbo died in September 1885, when he was accidentally hit and wounded by a locomotive in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. It was suggested that he had died saving the younger circus elephant, Tom Thumb—although not all witnesses agreed. Peculiarly, Jumbo's stomach was found to contain numerous metallic objects, including coins, keys and metal rivets.

Following his death, Jumbo's hide was stuffed and travelled with the Barnum & Bailey circus for several years. It was later donated to Tufts University in Massachusetts, where it was displayed until it was destroyed by fire in 1975. His heart was sold to Cornell University, and his skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Jumbo's ashes remain at Tufts University, contained in a large peanut butter jar in the office of the university's athletic director. His preserved tail, removed before the fire, is in the university's archives. Jumbo has also long been the name of the Tufts University mascot.

Elephant No. 52: Gelatin Printing

For today's elephant, I decided to try gelatin printing. While I'm familiar with the concept of silver gelatin printing in photography, I'd never heard of using actual gelatin to make a print until a couple of days ago.

The concept is fairly simple:

1. Make a sheet of really firm gelatin the night before.

2. Roll some water-based ink onto the gelatin surface with a brayer.

3. Manipulate the ink on the surface in various ways.

4. Lay a sheet of paper or fabric on top of the surface.

5. Gently lift the print and let it dry.

I made the gelatin last night following some detailed instructions I found online. The ratio is two tablespoons (30 ml) of powdered gelatin for every cup (250 ml) of water, which is about one-quarter the water that you'd use to make a gelatin dessert.

When the gelatin powder has been dissolved and boiled in water, you pour it into a cookie sheet. The ideal thickness for this process is apparently 1/2 to 3/4 inch. Once the gelatin is on the cookie sheet, you leave it to set overnight.

The gelatin sheet that results is more like rubber than gelatin. It can apparently be cut to size, wiped clean to reuse, and kept around for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator.

Once the gelatin is ready to go, you can start playing with the surface. The first thing to do is apply some water-soluble ink. I thought I might be able to use acrylic paint, but it would have required something called an extender (to lengthen the drying time), and it was far more expensive than simply buying some water-soluble block printing ink.

The ink goes on in what seems to be a very translucent way, but don't be fooled. It's actually far more saturated than it looks.

After you have the ink on the gelatin plate, you can start the actual printing part. One of the sites I looked at suggested making a silhouette to lay on top of the ink.

When you remove the silhouette, it takes all the ink in that area with it, leaving a void.

You can then lay a piece of printing paper over this, which will leave you with a white area. I tried this, but I didn't much like the effect of a stark white area in the middle (although it later grew on me). I could have added some ink into the empty area after removing the silhouette, but I wasn't all that interested in playing with it.

The other thing you can do is create patterns right in the ink. All this involves is the removal of ink by brushing across it. I was careful not to cut into the gelatin plate when I did this, but it's a very simple process. I found this technique slightly more appealing.

There are other things you can do to make this more exciting, such as using more than one colour of ink, or painting ink on top of whatever design you've created, or adding texture with various objects. I thought I'd try to go fairly plain on this attempt at gelatin printing, just to get a feel for it. In retrospect, it might have been more interesting if I'd played a bit more.

A few general things about this process:

1. When you press your printing paper onto the inked gelatin plate, make sure to smooth it down everywhere. You need to be gentle but firm. As you can see on some of my prints, I didn't always pay attention to the central area, and sometimes I missed the edges.

2. The ink will tend to spread across the gelatin plate when you press down with your printing paper. This creates a nice enough effect, but sharp lines aren't the easiest thing to create.

3. The texture of the paper will imprint into the ink, exaggerating the paper's texture to a certain extent. If you don't want this effect, go for a paper with very little texture.

You can really only create one good print from each design you make. However, it's very easy to re-ink the gelatin plate and create something new. The plate also cleans completely if you wipe it gently with a dry paper towel, being careful to remove the final thin film of ink.

This was quite a simple process, but it didn't do much for me. I don't know if it was the lack of control, or the limited nature of the designs I could create, but I didn't love gelatin printing. I kept my gelatin plate for now, so I may try gelatin printing again before the plate does something weird in the fridge. Perhaps combining extra inks and new textures might make it more appealing. Or not.

Elephant Lore of the Day
When the Moulin Rouge opened in Paris October 1889, one of its most remarkable features was a giant stucco elephant out back, next to the Jardin de Paris.

Originally built for the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889, the elephant was purchased by Moulin Rouge owner Joseph Oller as an entertainment venue for gentlemen only. For the price of one franc, a man could climb a spiral staircase inside one of the elephant's legs. When he reached the elephant's hollow abdomen, he was treated to a display of belly dancing: at the time, both exotic and erotic. Other than the dancers, women were not allowed in the elephant.

Sadly, the elephant was removed and destroyed well before its time, and when the Moulin Rouge was rebuilt in 1906, the elephant was gone.

The elephant in the garden of the Moulin Rouge, ca. 1900.
Source: http://www.wetcanvas.com/Museum/Posters/Entertainers/
Moulin_Rouge/index.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

Elephant No. 51: Shisha Mirror Work

For today's elephant, I decided to try shisha mirror work. I've always liked the look of this kind of embroidery, but I figured it was probably difficult and time-consuming, so it was something I was never particularly motivated to try.

Because it's so prevalent in Indian clothing, I assumed that shisha work developed in India. Although some sources do indeed suggest an Indian origin, it's more likely that this kind of embroidery comes from Central Asia. The Persian word shisheh means "glass", and the technique probably found its way to India via the conquering Moghuls of Central Asia. Whatever its origins, shisha embroidery is today most widely found in India, adding sparkle to everything from clothing to home decor.

Shisha describes both the embroidery and its characteristic small mirrors. Originally, the mirrors were made of mica flakes, and even beetle wings. In sixteenth-century Europe, glass supplanted mica, and shisha work began appearing in the stumpwork embroidery of Tudor England. Today, shisha work is created almost exclusively with mass-produced shisha mirrors. These mirrors come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, cut down from much larger sheets of glass.

I already had several shapes and sizes of shisha mirrors on hand. Some were given to me by my father, who brought them back from India. Some I ordered from an embroidery shop. Some I actually found at a local dollar store. Why I bought any at all, for a technique that didn't really interest me, I'll never know.

Although I could probably have figured out on my own how to sew the mirrors to fabric, I decided to take a shortcut and find some instructions online. I found a great tutorial from Joyful Abode that made it look easy, so I started with this.

I chose heavy black satin for the backing, thinking it would set off the mirrors rather nicely. Satin turns out not to be the best fabric to use for this kind of work. Even the thick satin I used is not heavy enough to bear the weight of the embroidery and the mirrors—even held very taut in an embroidery hoop—so it had a tendency to pucker and pull. It also had a tendency to snag.

For thread, I used inexpensive cotton embroidery thread. I toyed briefly with the idea of using silk embroidery thread, but since I was just learning, I thought it might be better to use something cheap.

Although the stitches are very simple—even if you've never embroidered before in your life—it took me a while to get the hang of this. First of all, it doesn't seem possible to affix something round to fabric when there are no holes to stitch through.

Second of all, it's surprisingly difficult to keep the stitches even all the way around, while also keeping the mirror from sliding about. If the stitches aren't even—or if they aren't wide enough—the mirror will ultimately pop out of its ring of stitches. In a couple of places, I had to go back and add a few extra stitches to keep this from happening.

The diamond shapes were even more complicated than the circles. I couldn't find any instructions on how to deal with this particular shape, so I more or less winged it. It turned out okay, but the diamonds don't have the nice edges I was expecting, so there must be a better way of doing this.

I didn't draw anything to start, so I mostly just filled things in with mirrors as I went along. It was a little easier once I did the trunk.

I would have liked to add more mirrors in the ear area. Unfortunately, I ran out of room on the embroidery hoop, and I also ran out of time. Truth be told, I also got tired of doing this. It was surprisingly time-consuming, and I kept getting blinded by the little mirrors, which had a tendency to catch the light.

If I were to do this again, I might use a single colour of embroidery thread. And I'd definitely use a heavier fabric. Most shisha work also includes additional embroidery to tie things together, but I didn't have time for that, either.

I like the final look of this, although it's more abstract than I had planned. It looks like an elephant if you sort of squint at it, but I think it might need a bit of extra embroidery to make it more obvious.

Elephant Lore of the Day
The southern Indian state of Kerala is famous for its festivals—almost all of which include at least one elephant. Richly caparisoned, the elephants carry deities during festival processions, as well as on their daily circuits of temple grounds.

Temple elephants are decorated with gold-embroidered textiles, bells and necklaces. Riders carry silk parasols with tinsel trim, and wave peacock feathers and large white tufts of fur in time to an orchestra.

Most Hindu temples in Kerala own at least one elephant; the famous Guruvayur temple has more than sixty. At the Koodalmanikyam Temple, seventeen elephants make daily ceremonial rounds. Seven of these wear headdresses of pure gold; the other ten have headdresses of pure silver.

Elephants and riders at the Thrissur Pooram Festival in Kerala.
Photo: Rajesh Kakkanatt
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ThrissurPooram-Kuda.jpg

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

Elephant No. 50: Papier-mâché Clay

I found a package of papier-mâché clay this morning while poking around in my craft supplies, and thought it might be interesting to try for today's elephant. The package had been opened and a small amount removed, but I have no recollection of ever using this stuff before.

Conventional papier-mâché has been around for centuries. In Asia, it was primarily used to make painted and lacquered articles such as small boxes, trays and containers, and to produce decorative elements for armour and shields. As early as 1540, papier-mâché was being used to make dolls' heads, which were moulded from a blend of paper pulp, clay and plaster, then sanded, painted and varnished.

In the early eighteenth century, gilded papier-mâché made its debut as an inexpensive alternative to plaster and wood ornamentation for furniture and architecture. In 1772, Henry Clay of Birmingham, England, patented a process whereby laminated sheets of paper were treated with linseed oil to make waterproof panels. The panels were then used to build the doors of coaches and carriages, as well as for other structural purposes. In 1847, Theodore Jennens invented a means of steaming and pressing the laminated sheets into various shapes, leading to the extensive use of papier-mâché in the furniture industry.

Today, plastics and composite materials have largely taken over the structural role once played by papier-mâché clay. The material is now reserved primarily for artistic use, including the production of jewellery and various decorative items. 

For today's elephant, I thought I'd make something fairly simple. I was originally planning to make a whole elephant, but the instructions said I'd need an armature for something like that, and I didn't feel like playing with wire today.

I've never actually liked using papier-mâché. The kind where you lay infinite layers of glued paper over one another was something I always found pretty tedious, and I hated the lumpy look of it—or worse, the one or two obvious paper seams I always seemed to get. My hope for today was that using papier-mâché in a clay form might give me a more elegant result.

The stuff I had on hand is something called "Celluclay". I have no idea where it came from, but this pound of it cost ten dollars whenever I got it, so it's not exactly as cheap as mushing up old newspapers.

Celluclay is a sort of compressed fibrous material that looks and feels like shredded newsprint, but smells a bit like poster paint. I'm not sure what the binder might be, but it wafts a very fine powder all over the place, and definitely made me sneeze.

The instructions say to mix this material with some warm water until it feels like firm clay or a soft dough, with no lumps. You can't get rid of all the lumps completely, but I hoped a few lumps would add to the charm of the final object.

Once I had a reasonable consistency of clay, I shaped it into an elephant head. This material was surprisingly easy to work with, and shapes quite nicely. It even holds its shape better than I thought it would.

The instructions suggested that I could "saw, sand, nail, paint and waterproof" this stuff once it dried and hardened, so I wasn't too particular about fine details at this point. I shaped this primarily by hand, using a small paring knife to shape the mouth and smooth things out here and there. A bit of water on the tip of your finger will also smooth things out to a certain extent.

For "a hurry-up project" (as the instructions called it), it was suggested that this would dry faster if I put it in the oven, or blasted it with a hairdryer. I put it in the oven at 150˚C (300˚F) for about an hour. It was a bit on the thick side, so although the outside shell dried quickly, it felt a bit squishy in the middle even after I took it out of the oven. It also smells slightly unpleasant when cooked.

I started to sand it, then decided to leave it rough. It sands easily enough, but I thought the rough look might be more what the material demanded.

I painted it with acrylic paints, starting with a grey basecoat on both sides. When that dried, I layered various shades of grey, with a bit of pink in the ears, mouth and tip of the trunk, and white for the tusk. Because of the roughness of the material, I found a pointillism type of technique worked best.

I'm not sure how I feel about this material or the final result, but it wasn't difficult or time-consuming, so it would be worth another try sometime. Maybe if I'd painted it with glossy enamels or sealed it with glossy varnish, it might appeal to me a little more.

But it still smells weird, even sealed with paint, so if you try this, you might want to avoid cooking it.

Elephant Lore of the Day
"Papier-mâché is French for "chewed paper". Although elephants do not eat paper, they do eat plant materials, grinding them with teeth that are very different from those of most other mammals.

Over its lifetime, an elephant will have a total of 28 teeth. The two upper second incisors are the tusks. Elephants also have 12 premolars and 12 molars, with three of each in both sides of both jaws. 

Replica of an Asian elephant's molar, Cologne Zoo, Germany.
Photo: Sarefo
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elephant.tooth.replica.1.jpg

Elephants also differ from most mammals in that their teeth grow and fall out throughout their lives. The adult tusks remain in place from the time an elephant is about one year old, but the chewing teeth replace five, and sometimes six, times over the years. New teeth do not grow up from underneath, forcing out existing teeth. Instead, new teeth grow at the back of the elephant's mouth, pushing older teeth towards the front, where they break off in pieces until they are gone.

With all this activity in an elephant's mouth, abscesses in chewing teeth, tusks and jaws are common. Sadly, abscesses like this can lead to an elephant's premature death.

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

Elephant No. 49: Watercolour Pastels

Today I decided to play with one of my favourite things: watercolour pastels. Technically, I suppose these are watercolour pencils, but they have the consistency of Conté crayon rather than a coloured pencil, so I prefer to call them watercolour pastels.

A watercolour pastel contains the same material as any dry watercolour paint, compressed into pencil form. The watercolour material is usually encased in wood like a regular pencil, although you can also get watercolour pastels in stick form.

You draw with watercolour pastels just as you would with any other dry pastel or pencil. The difference is that, when you add water, the pigment is released to create a watercolour effect. This gives you the control of a pencil or pastel, with the added potential of paint.

In my experience, not all watercolours in pencil or pastel form are created equal. With this particular medium, you definitely get what you pay for. My favourites are the Derwent Inktense watercolour pastels, but they're pricey at about three dollars a pencil. I've got several other sets of watercolour pencils, but the Derwent Inktense ones have the most saturated colour, if that's what you're looking for.

There's something about drawing with a pencil, then turning it into paint, that pleases the kid in me. When I was little, I used to get a Rupert the Bear Annual every Christmas, and the first thing I turned to was the centre section. Back then, the centre section contained "magic painting" pages, which looked like black-and-white line drawings filled with tiny dots. The magic part was that, when you painted over the dots with a wet brush, coloured paint would appear. Even more magic was the fact that different parts of the drawing produced different colours.

Working with watercolour pastels obviously isn't exactly the same, but to me there's still a bit of magic in making pencil lines turn into paint.

For today's elephant, I decided to use bright colours rather than anything too realistic.

One of the drawbacks to working with watercolour pastels is that, as with any other watercolour, you can't really sketch anything in pencil first. If you do, the pencil will show through any paint you lay over top, which is a look I usually don't like. Instead, I sketched an outline in watercolour pastel.

In retrospect, I probably should have sketched it in pencil, then gone over the lines with the pastel when I was happy with it. Once you've sketched something with watercolour pastel, it's difficult to remove completely, as you can see in the front tusk.

Using white pastel over top in an attempt to erase the mistake does nothing, by the way.  I tried, but it's a pointless exercise. I actually don't know what the white pastel is for, unless solely to create a coloured pencil or dry pastel effect.

I started by staying fairly close to the sketch lines, just to get a feel for how I might create some modelling and dimension.

 

After the first three or four colours, I started covering larger areas with light swathes of pastel, then began blending them with water.

Because the pencil lines were light and fairly far apart, many of them didn't completely disappear  when I painted over the area. Although you can rework areas to a certain extent, some lines will remain unless you really saturate the area with water.

One of the things I like about watercolour pastels is that you can keep some of the pencil lines more or less intact if you like. This is fairly early on in the process, but it gives you an idea of the effect you can create.

This was one of the first times I've used watercolour pastels without really laying in a lot of pigment. When you use a lot of pencil, it creates a sort of watercolour pan, which allows you to produce more painterly effects.

Because I was working fairly light, the final result has the feel of a sketch overlaid with washes of paint. I wasn't sure I liked it at first, but it's grown on me. The combination of lines and paint is surprisingly pleasing in real life. It's not a realistic sort of drawing, but it's got a cheery kids-illustration feel that I rather like.

Elephant Lore of the Day
Not having fingers, and lacking the necessary dexterity in their trunks, elephants cannot create art with watercolour pastels.

Like horses, elephants essentially walk on tiptoe. Although elephants have five toes, these are buried inside the fleshy part of the foot, and only some of the toes end in toenails. In general, African elephants have four toenails on the front feet and three on the back. Asian elephants have five toenails on the front feet, and four on the back.

An elephant's toes are encased in a much larger area of spongy tissue.
Source: http://elephant.elehost.com/About_Elephants/
Anatomy/The_Feet/the_feet.html

Elephant pedicures are an important part of elephant care in zoos and circuses. In the wild, the keratinized layer on the sole and toes of an elephant's feet will naturally wear down. In captivity, however, elephant keepers take care to trim an elephant's cuticles, file off overgrown toenails, remove any foreign objects embedded in the sole, and moisturize the foot.

Source: http://houstonzooblogs.org/elephant/2010/04/elephant-foot-care/

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