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

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Elephant No. 11: Encaustic Painting

Encaustic painting is something I've been wanting to try for years, so I was happy to find a local art store offering a free demonstration this morning.

The word encaustic is derived from the Greek enkaustikos, meaning "to burn or apply heat". Encaustic painting, also known as hot-wax painting, involves the application of liquified wax—usually containing pigment—to a hard surface such as wood. Canvas and cardstock are often used as well, the main criterion being that the support not bend too much if the paint is applied thickly.

There are many recipes for encaustic paint, the simplest of which involves adding pigments to beeswax. Other recipes contain damar resin, linseed oil and even other types of wax. Pigments are available in powder form, but other pigment sources, including oil paint, can be added as well. The most convenient form of encaustic paint comes in pre-mixed colours, which can be blended when hot.

As long as the wax remains warm, it can be shaped with tools such as metal spatulas, knives, scribes and natural bristle brushes. Unusual effects can also be achieved with techniques such as blowing hot wax around with a straw or a heat gun. Many artists embed additional materials into the surface, such as photographs, drawings, fibres, metals and so forth.

Encaustic painting was probably first used in the fifth century B.C. by the Greeks, but is perhaps most closely associated with Egypt's Fayum mummy portraits. Until new materials and methods such as tempera, fresco and oil began appearing around the seventh century A.D., encaustic wax was the most popular painting medium.

Portrait of a wealthy woman
A.D. 160–170, Fayum, Egypt
British Museum, London

From the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, encaustic was virtually a lost art. In the twentieth century, however, it enjoyed something of a resurgence among artists such as Georges Rouault, Diego Rivera and Jasper Johns. Over the past twenty years, as new materials and tools have developed, encaustic has become popular again.

Much of the beauty of encaustic painting lies in the translucency of the material, which gives the paintings depth and richness. Because the medium is wax, the paint can also be reheated and reworked. When cooled and dried, encaustic is a highly durable surface, in part because of its resistance to moisture.

Today's demonstration was given by Kathryn Bevier of Enkaustikos, a company that makes encaustic paints, mediums and tools. The process is quite straightforward: melt some wax, paint it onto a surface, set it with a heatgun, add more paint, set it again, repeat.

My main problem was that I didn't have any of the materials. We were each given a couple of small paint samples, which was great; unfortunately, I didn't want to paint a green and crimson elephant. So of course I bought some encaustic paints. And some mediums. And some masonite. And some panels. And some brushes—because who, after all, doesn't need to own 187 paintbrushes?

Good thing most of this stuff is pretty cheap. The paints were the most expensive item, but I used surprisingly little on today's elephant, leaving lots to use on...oh, I dunno...maybe Christmas gifts I can foist on family and friends. (Well, my family has probably had enough of such experimental gifts, but my friends are forewarned.)

Most of the brushes below were from the dollar store, which seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, who wants to "wreck" good brushes with wax? However, if you choose to use cheapies like this—eight brushes for $1.50—be prepared to pick a few bristles out of your painting.

I also discovered that one of the most important pieces of equipment—a pancake griddle—was something I didn't have. How do I not own one of these? That being said, why did it take me nearly two hours in a city of almost one million people to find a plain pancake griddle? I almost settled for a red plastic quesadilla maker from a thrift store (and if ever an item were made for thrift stores, it would surely be a red quesadilla maker). Luckily, I found a really good griddle on sale—at only about twice the cost of the quesadilla maker.

While the paints and mediums were melting on the griddle (which took way longer than I expected), I sketched an elephant onto a piece of masonite. Once the wax was liquified, I brushed wax medium over the entire thing, then set it with a heat gun. This melts the wax into the masonite, essentially priming your painting surface.

 

After the surface is prepared, it's pretty much like any other kind of painting. The paints can either be used right from the tins, or blended on the griddle surface. The paint should not be heated beyond 200˚F—and 175˚F is better. This means, however, that the paint can cool and harden almost before you can paint it onto the surface. At first I ended up with a bunch of chunky lines and a sort of a dry-brush effect, which wasn't at all what I had in mind. Even though I had the masonite right next to the griddle, it was a bit of a struggle to keep the paint liquid.

Eventually I discovered that it helped if I thinned the paint with a bit of wax medium. Not only does this seem to slow the cooling process, but it also allows for much finer lines and a certain translucency.

In between layers of paint, the heat gun should be used to set the paint and fuse the layers. This has to be done carefully, however, or you end up spreading the paint around, as it can easily liquefy. The effect is something like what the surface of water looks like when a search-and-rescue helicopter is hovering too low.

Another thing I found helpful was adding a thin layer of wax medium, reheating the surface almost to liquefaction, letting it cool until it was warm, then blending the semi-soft wax with the side of a paring knife. If I was relatively quick, the colours blended nicely.

To give this the glassy finish of traditional encaustic painting, I would need to scrape the entire surface to something relatively smooth, give it a coat of wax medium, then heat it to smooth it out further. I wasn't skilled enough to manage it over the entire surface, but I did get a bit of glassiness in a few spots. Given that this is a wax surface, I can still revisit it at some point when I have more time.

If you're interested in encaustic painting, there are lots of videos online to give you the basics. I'm sure the method I used today is semi-crazed, because all I did was take what I learned this morning then come home and muck about with the materials.

One word of caution: make sure you do this in a well-ventilated space. Although melted beeswax isn't particularly noxious, the paints I used contain resin, which smells something like sealing wax as it heats up. It won't kill you, but it might give you a bit of a sore throat and raw eyes. Don't ask me how I know.

Elephant Fact of the Day
In ancient times, one of the most popular supports for encaustic painting was ivory. This was partly because ivory gave the painting a subtle glow it might have lacked on a darker surface such as wood.

In ancient times, ivory was used for everything from carvings and religious objects to false teeth and the eyes of statues. Although elephants were the most important source of ivory in the Classical world, hippopotamus and mammoth ivory were also used. The word ivory actually derives from the Ancient word for elephant, âbu, and the related Latin, ebur.

Elephants have been endangered since antiquity, due largely to our demand for ivory. The elephants indigenous to Syria and North Africa, for example, became extinct nearly two thousand years ago, likely killed off for their tusks.


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Elephant No. 10: Mapping

The earliest known map is the sixth-century B.C. Babylonian World Map, incised in stone. Other early maps include the sixth-century B.C. Anaximander Map, which locates the Aegean Sea at the centre of the world's three continents (Europe, Asia and Libya); and the surprisingly accurate Ptolemy Map of A.D. 150.

By medieval times, there were world maps, regional maps, maps of trade routes, and even pilgrimage maps showing the faithful every shrine and church along the way. In addition to land maps, there were also maps of the heavens, and sea charts indicating the location of known dangers—including the odd sea monster.

The first reasonably accurate maps were not drawn until the Renaissance, when greater exploration by both land and sea gave people a better idea of how the world actually looked. From then on, maps improved with every advance in navigational equipment, and every newly established trade route or settlement.

Today's maps are created using computers, satellites and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). They can map everything from rainfall to the location of small populations of endangered animals. They can also be redrawn quickly when changes occur—as in the aftermath of a tsunami, hurricane or earthquake.

When I originally thought of doing something related to maps, my first idea was to draw a mythical country in the shape of an elephant. I figured I could make it look like a medieval chart, with things like "Here be dragons" on the edge of the known world, and little sea monsters poking their heads out of the oceans. Then I decided that it might be more interesting and challenging to find an elephant shape within an existing map.

The rules I set myself were these: I could only cut along lines that already existed on an actual map, such as rivers, political boundaries, roads, mountain ranges, oceans and lakes. I toyed with buying a map of either India or Africa, given that those are the traditional homes of elephants. I figured, however, that it might be too easy to cheat by cutting along whatever tiny little geographical feature suited me best. So I decided on a map of London, England instead.

The reason I chose London—apart from it being my favourite city—is that it's a city with a long history. This would give me lots of curving lines to play with, which I wouldn't have in a city that's built on a grid. London also has a place called Elephant and Castle, which I decided to use as the elephant's eye.

Cutting an elephant out of a map was actually harder than I expected. Although I could see an elephant shape almost immediately, once I was contending with actual roads, it was difficult to find the lines I needed. It didn't help that I'd limited my options by determining the eye ahead of time.

I started by cutting along the trunk, which was the most obvious line to me. Then I could see an ear to the right, flying in the wind, so I cut that. Then I thought I saw another raised ear, so I cut that, too. Unfortunately, then it started looking like Dumbo from the Walt Disney film, or maybe a vampire bat. So I cut off the second ear, then the first.

I had no idea how to contend with the body, since it would have trailed off the bottom of the map. To make matters worse, the toplines were really weird. I thought I might deal with the problem by cutting along the grid lines, making it sort of abstract. But that looked stupid, because the squares on this particular map were so big. So I cut off the squares as well, ultimately leaving just the head.

The elephant originally had a higher forehead, but I didn't like that, either, so I shaved bits of it away. I would have liked a much thinner trunk as well, but there weren't enough streets in that part of the map. If I'd started whittling away at the trunk along the available lines, it would have looked like it had been nibbled by meerkats or bandicoots.

I also had to contend with some very strange street configurations in the ear area, making the ear tip interestingly raggedy.

When I was done, I darkened the eye so that it was a little more obvious, but decided not to darken any of the other lines. It's a little less abstract in real life, when you can look at it up close. I think that, if I were to try this again, I wouldn't limit myself to a specific starting point.

One of my favourite writers on London is Iain Sinclair. In his book London Orbital, he details a journey along London's ring road, the M25, in a highly personal but compelling account. It makes me think that, the next time I go to London, I should consider taking this map with me to try and walk its circumference. Good thing I didn't cut any of the lines in the middle of the Thames.

Elephant Lore of the Day
In today's London, Elephant and Castle is a major road intersection, occupying the former site of an eighteenth-century coaching inn by the same name. Before the inn was built, the site was occupied by a blacksmith and cutler (a maker of knives and weapons with a cutting edge). This is probably where the name originally came from, as the coat of arms of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers features an elephant with a castle on its back. The Worshipful Company chose the elephant for their coat of arms because of the once-extensive use of elephant ivory in knife handles.

Elephant and Castle was badly bombed in the Blitz in 1941, but was extensively redeveloped in the 1960s. It now includes an office tower called Hannibal House—named for the Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with elephants in 218 B.C.


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Elephant No. 9: Acrylic Medium

At last week's yarn-spinning session, I was kindly invited to return to the countryside this week to play with acrylic medium. I've never used this stuff before, although I've eyed it in the art store from time to time and wondered what it would be like to work with.

The group holding the workshop was the West Carleton Fibre Guild, so the focus for today was using acrylic medium with fibre elements. The idea was a fabric support for the acrylic medium, with bits of lace, paper, ribbon, yarn and so forth embedded in it.

I honestly didn't quite grasp the concept from the newsletter I received, even when I looked at the helpful online references to other artists' finished works. The suggestion that I "think collage" didn't really help me, for some reason. However, I'm game for anything that offers me a chance to play with new materials, so off I went.

The list of suggested things to bring was pretty extensive: paint, glitter, beads, buttons, lace, ribbon, ink, paper, metallic bits, sequins, fabric, feathers, natural materials such as grasses, and anything else with a texture. And that didn't include the basic equipment such as canvas, palette, brushes, palette knives, plastic tablecloth, towel and parchment paper.

At first, I found the idea of dragging all this out to a community centre pretty daunting. I even toyed with the idea of just going to the workshop to learn, then doing the actual activity at home. But I'd optimistically loaded up the car last night, so what the heck. I figured I could always leave everything in the car until I knew what I was in for. As long as they'd let me make an elephant and not some sort of abstract to "get a feel for the materials", I'd be happy.

Acrylic medium is like very thick, gooey acrylic paint. It comes in various textures, weights and consistencies and, although it is usually white, it is also available in a modest range of colours. The "gel" version dries clear; most others dry white or translucent. The density of most acrylic mediums allow you to embed things in the surface and create surface textures. It can also be painted, dyed or stained, either before you apply it, or after it's dry. For those of you who paint, gesso would allow you a similar effect. The benefit of acrylic medium over gesso, however, is that you can sew through it, and it remains flexible, even when dry.

Our instructor Frances was great, and most people dove right in, making everything from intricate abstract fabric designs, to a purple cow, to my favourite: a Victorian-looking still life with feathers, real beetles and butterflies, seed pods and grasses. Just goes to show you that the acrylic medium is heavy enough and gooey enough that you can stick anything to it.

The medium I used was a gel with the consistency of pudding, and of course I glopped the stuff on way too thick. When it's thick, it allows for interesting sculptural effects, and allows you more leeway in embedding things into the medium. If it's thick, you can also sand or carve it later, if you like. Unfortunately, the thicker it is, the longer it takes to dry. This is helpful if you want to take your time manipulating the material, but a complete nuisance if you want to paint it—or if you just want it to dry, already. I liked the dimensionality I got, but I kept smearing the thicker parts with the side of my hand.

I created the elephant shape first, then loosely spread around the rest of the medium. I shredded bits of washed dryer sheets, poked them into the medium with a plastic knife, then moved them around to give the background some texture. For no apparent reason, I decided to add the three glass domes and a bunch of fine blue glitter. Not liking that, I added blue and purple splotches of paint. Didn't like that, either.

At that point the session ended, which was probably a good thing, as I had begun to chase my tail in artistic terms.

A few hours later, I looked at it again, and made it at least less horrible to me. I smushed green paint all over the background—and I really did have to smush it in to all the crevices of the now-hardened dryer sheet.

The elephant, on which the acrylic medium was thickest, was still very wet and gooey. This was a good thing when I went to embed beads in the headdress—a bad thing when I tried to paint over it.

I won't be framing the final result, although I found the material interesting to work with, and would definitely try it again. But next time no glitter.

Elephant Fact of the Day
An elephant's ears are very important for temperature regulation. Elephant ears consist of a thin layer of skin, stretched over cartilage and an extensive network of blood vessels. When it is particularly hot, you will see elephants flapping their ears continuously. This creates a slight breeze, cooling the surface blood vessels. The blood in these surface blood vessels—now cooled by as much as 6˚C/10˚F—is then circulated throughout the elephant's body.

One of the most obvious physical distinctions between African and Asian elephants is the size of their ears. This is because African elephants live closer to the equator, where it is warmer, while Asian elephants tend to live farther north, in slightly cooler climates.


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Elephant No. 8: Repoussé and Chasing

For today's elephant, I decided to try repoussé with a bit of chasing. The process I used was technically different from true repoussé and chasing—mostly because I didn't have a sheet of metal thick enough to use hammers and embossing tools. Instead, I used a piece of 36-gauge aluminum, and a technique that involved a bit of repoussé and chasing, but which was ultimately more like metal embossing. The principle is similar, but the execution is easier and faster.

Repoussé and chasing are ancient techniques that involve denting metal with various implements to create a design. In repoussé, the artist works on the reverse, creating a design that will appear in low relief when flipped over. Chasing involves the exact opposite: working from the front, the image is indented, to create a design that is depressed. Most metalworking of this type employs both repoussé and chasing, to fine-tune designs and give them extra dimensionality.

When done properly—in other words, not the way I've done it—this is a relatively slow and painstaking process. The metal must be annealed (heated and tempered first), and worked patiently, so that it doesn't crack and break. The softer and more malleable the metal, the quicker you can work. Thicker sheets of metal, and harder types of metal or alloys, will take longer if you are to avoid stressing them too quickly. If you've ever bashed away at a nail and watched the head begin to split and fray at the edges, you've seen metal stress at work.

Proper repoussé and chasing also require exotic equipment such as pitch (a tar-like resin) to allow the design to sink into something with a bit of give, as well as special hammers, tools and punches. Luckily, the metal I used was soft enough that it could be indented with the kind of metal tools you'd use to sculpt clay. For my "pitch" surface, I used a piece of low-pile fleece over a piece of heavy cardboard.

The most widely used metals for this type of work are copper, tin and bronze. This is partly because a high copper content makes metals more malleable, and partly because these metals are relatively inexpensive. Gold and silver are also easy to work, but their cost makes them the kind of thing you only want to play with once you've mastered the technique.

Most people draw their designs on the back of the metal (where they'll mostly be working) with a permanent marker, bearing in mind that the final result will be reversed. I was tempted to avoid the trouble of drawing anything, just so that I could just get started. But then I saw that even artists who bang simple circles into a sheet of metal draw the circles on first.

Rather than draw something of my own today, I chose this head of an armoured war elephant, created around the time of the birth of Christ. An armoured elephant made sense to me for something worked in metal, and I liked the idea of being able to play with texture in the scales and so forth.

Fragment from a copy of a bronze sculpture, ca. 1 A.D.
Collection of the Staatliche Antikensammlung, Munich

To start, I traced the outlines of the photograph onto heavy artist-grade tracing paper. Then, rather than draw onto the aluminum, I laid the tracing on top of the aluminum, and used the end of a fine paintbrush to incise my design. This indents the pilot lines.

The next step involves flipping the aluminum over to the reverse, and using a rounded tool of some sort (I used the cap of a pen) to emboss all the outlined areas. When you flip it back over, all the areas you embossed are now raised like little pillows.

Now comes the creative part. For my elephant, I wanted a fair amount of texture, so I scratched lines into the back, flipped it over and incised the outlines again, added sweeping lines in the ears with the end of a paintbrush handle, used the tip of a pair of tweezers to make little dots through the main part of the armour, and added some more texture from the front. For tools, you can use just about anything that will dent soft metal, and the techniques are pretty much what you'd use to draw or paint. If this were proper repoussé and chasing, on thicker metal, obviously tweezers and a paintbrush would be useless.

After I finished playing with all the textures, I ran a flat, round tool (actually a bottle of white-out) all around the outside edge, to make the design pop just a little more.

This was actually fun. Or perhaps just more my speed than origami and invisible ink.

Elephant Fact of the Day
Although many ancient peoples used war elephants, the Romans trained them primarily as performers. Using elephants whose inherent good nature had not been ruined by war training, the Romans taught them to play cymbals, sit on giant couches in togas, and even walk tightropes. And, when Julius Caesar returned to Rome in 51 B.C., following his final victory in Gaul, there were elephants on either side of the procession, lighting the way with candelabra held in their trunks.

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Elephant No. 7: Paint-by-Number

I remember doing one or two paint-by-number kits when I was a kid. I think one was of a dog, and one might have been a landscape with a farmhouse and horse. I don't think I finished either of them, but I did like the little kits. They came with cardboard covered in a sort of canvas surface, and bright turquoise outlines with numbers to tell you which colour went where.

Best of all were the tiny pots of paint, all linked together. Back then, the pots contained oil paint, which you had to stir, and which usually dried out before you could finish your masterpiece. Given that they were oil paints and had a pretty strong smell, most kids would probably have been high by the time they'd painted a tree branch.

Painting by number has come a long way since then. There are thousands of designs, and there have been a number of exhibitions devoted to this slightly dubious form of art. Even the phrase "paint-by-number" has found its way into common parlance, describing everything from the actual kits to the concept of doing something by rote.

The original paint-by-number kits were developed and produced in 1950 by Max S. Klein and Dan Robbins. Klein was an engineer and owner of Detroit, Michigan's Palmer Paint Company, and Robbins was a commercial artist. One source I read jokes that Robbins is the most reproduced artist in the world, because he designed so many of the designs for the kits.

In 1951, Palmer Paint introduced the Craft Master brand of kits, with boxtop mottoes such as, "A beautiful oil painting the first time you try" and "Every man a Rembrandt." My mother brought me this kit that someone had in their basement. The motto on the back of this one is "The Art of Relaxation". Definitely not my experience today.

Palmer Paint sold over 12 million kits fairly quickly, prompting other companies to produce similar items. The Palmer Paint Company's archives are now in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, which also produced a comprehensive exhibition on paint-by-number.

In 2008, a private collector in Massachusetts assembled over 6,000 works of paint-by-number, dating back to the 1950s. The resulting collection was used to create the Paint By Number Museum: the world's largest online archive of its kind.

The kit I bought for today's elephant is similar to the ones I had as a kid: cardboard covered in a canvas-like surface, outlines with numbers (bluish-black rather than turquoise), tiny pots of paint, and a brush. The only real difference is that the paints are now acrylic. I guess I don't get to relive the entire experience of stinky paint, watering eyes and dried-out brush—but we can't have everything.

I couldn't find a paint-by-number kit in the art store that had just an elephant, so I bought this one. I figured I'd paint just the elephant and ignore or overpaint all the other animals, since the whole idea of the blog is an elephant a day, not a herd of African animals a day.

I'd forgotten how much I don't like painting by numbers. It literally took hours, even though I only did the elephant. I also didn't like having to mix my own colours—the old kits came with every last colour you needed. Very few of the colours on my elephant are directly from the little pots of paint. Most of them were blends, which meant that, even within one area, the colour varied wildly.

There was also a problem with paint consistency. If I put the paint on thick, it was difficult to manoeuvre into the skinnier spaces. If it was too wet, it wasn't opaque enough, and spread into areas in which it didn't belong. And always, the lines and numbers showed through, unless the paint was basically trowelled on. 

I'm probably just not patient enough to do something like this. In the interests of making it look fairly realistic, the numbered areas are quite detailed, making it hard to fill in anything quickly. I kept thinking that I could have painted a similar-looking elephant from scratch in half the time. Then again, it probably wouldn't have looked as much like a real elephant.

Next time I try painting by number, I think I'll use magic markers.

Elephant Fact of the Day
There is a whole industry devoted to the paintings of elephants. Some have tried to claim that elephants can paint things such as flowers, and even other elephants. While elephants can indeed paint such things when carefully directed by their handlers, most elephant art is, to put it mildly, highly abstract.

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