NELVIA'SART.COM

                                                                Elephant's Eye                                                                     11"x14"                                 ...

Elephants are such fascinating animals, very intelligent and quite structured.  I love the texture of their hide and always enjoy drawing them.  Just plenty of places to put squiggles and lines.  I always am amazed at how small their eyes are with such a gigantic body, but they seem to have no issues seeing.  The Washington DC Zoo has several elephants and it is always fun to watch them interact with their trainers.  Thanks for stopping by and hope you are having a great day.

                                                                    Reaching Out                                                                         8"x10"                         ...

Got Bulwagi completed, I think, today.  This has been such a fun experiment and I am happy to say such a forgiving process.  Dab on a little more pastel, graphite, erase it off and voila you have a bit of texture of elephant hide.  How? 1)  Good reference photos, thanks Paul/hubby 2)  textured mat board 3)  pastel 4)  graphite 5)  putty eraser (almost the best tool in the box) My hubby is glad to see that he isn't all purple/blue and yellow any more, although the undertones of terra cotta, purple/blue and ochre still shine through and are repeatedin the background. I am not going to spray fix this as I don't usually fix pastel as it tends to change the colors and mat down the refracting particles (sounded pretty good eh?)  So will end up and mat and frame if I frame him. Will leave this on the board for a few days so he can talk to me and make adjustments as needed, I see a big one I just fixed by his belly.  Wi...

Hmm, kind of making this up as I go along.  Here is today's update and think that I have about 1/3 left to work over, primarily the right side.  But since it is getting a bit tedious I am going to go have a run and then thinking about starting something else to work on as well.  I keep putting on some graphite dust but it just isn't showing up.  I might try wetting my finger and then smearing it a bit to see if I can get it to show up as a bit more texture, maybe I need a light spray of workable fixative, but it is so humid I am afraid it will ruin what I have.  So.... dilemna.  Don't know if it is the that the board is getting full and not holding additional specks but I get in on and then it just disappears. Always glad to see this on screen because you see things you don't when you look at the picture, also need to put it in a mirror so things pop out there as well. Anything anyone sees, please let me know. Thanks for stopping by and hope you are h...

We got more rain so the weather here is a bit cooler and it's time to go out and enjoy the porch (alas too early for wine) and my hubby.  So this is probably it for the day unless I sneak a few minutes here and there. Ok, got a couple more hours in on this and wanted to post this update because I think it shows a little bit better the direction I am trying to take this piece.  Here is what I am thinking out loud on this post.  I am trying to get more definition with the pencils and you can see if you enlarge this pic the more detailed work that is going on all around the head area.  I also have put on some graphite powder to add texture and see am going to have to apply it heavier, which I think I will do the final coat at the end.  Always have to be bolder than you initially think for both darks and highlights.  I see here that some of the highlighted areas need to be smoothed out, but will wait until the end, unless it bugs me.  Act...