Elephant No. 145: Éclaboussure

I didn't feel like constructing anything today, so I decided to try a Surrealist painting technique called éclaboussure instead. I love the Surrealists for their oddball artistic experiments.

Éclaboussure—from the French éclabousser ("to splash or spatter")—is a relatively simple process. The artist lays down watercolours or oil paints, then splatters water or turpentine on the surface, soaking it up to reveal splatters and dots where the medium was removed. It normally results in a sort of dreamy, atmospheric effect. The technique was used most notably by Spanish-born Mexican Surrealist Remedios Varo, who often painted figures against an éclaboussure background.

Roulotte, 1955
Remedios Varo (1908–1963)
Source: http://remediosvaro100remedios.blogspot.com/

Contemporary artists occasionally use éclaboussure techniques as well, either to produce backgrounds for figural paintings, or to create abstract works. I've even seen "digital éclaboussure", which is more or less a digital re-creation of an éclaboussure effect.

For today's elephant, I started out with watercolours, but they didn't react well to the canvas board I was using, so I switched to acrylics. Instead of using éclaboussure to make an abstract background on which to paint an elephant, I decided to try to create a recognizable elephant shape by wetting and sopping up paint. Since I couldn't find a representational éclaboussure work online, I wasn't sure if this was going to work. A remarkable number of Surrealist techniques do no lend themselves to figural works—which is perhaps the whole point of Surrealism.

I began by laying in a wash using several greens and browns.

When this was semi-dry, I dropped water on top of it with a paintbrush, in a vague elephant shape.

I sopped the water up almost right away with paper towels, and got this effect.

It didn't look quite the way I wanted it to, so I dropped on some more water and sopped that up as well.

After this, the acrylics were too dry to allow further removal with water, so I started a smaller piece in reds.

I used the same method to sop up the paint, working continuously this time.

I like the final effect on both of these. They have something of a tie-dye look, which I wasn't expecting, but it's still interesting. This is also a very simple technique, and takes hardly any time at all. The only drawback was how quickly the acrylics dried—then again, that forced me to make peace with whatever I could achieve in a short time.

Watercolours might have been better for this, but I didn't want to work with watercolour paper today, and watercolours don't really work on canvas board. And I definitely didn't want to start something in oils. But both would be worth a try. It would also be interesting to use something like these two ghostly elephants as an underlay for more finely detailed paintings. Maybe sometime I'll try that, too.

Elephant Lore of the Day
As a species, the elephant has been given many names throughout history. Here are a few of its historical names:

Latin: elephantus, barrus
Middle English: olifant, olifaunt
Medieval French: olifanz
Greek: elephas
Hindi: hathi

And here—just because it made me laugh to think of a ship, for example, signalling a message about elephants—is the word "elephant" in Morse Code, semaphore and signal flags:
(Source: http://www.himandus.net/elefunteria/library/words/languages.html)



Morse Code:  

Semaphore:   


Signal flags:   

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)