It is the beginning of 2010 - I had already been painting full-time for more than 20 years and painted hundreds of elephants, but I needed a challenge… I mention to a friend that I have wanted to do a life size elephant painting for a long time. He encourages me to make it one of my projects for 2010. The first challenge was to find canvas that would be wide enough. The widest canvas we could find came directly from a factory near Johannesburg. The canvas was 3 m wide. We bought ten meters, although I only planned to use four meters. I had to allow for the canvas to fold over the edges of the stretcher. That, together with the constraints of my work-space in which I had to build the stretcher and rig the canvas, eventually left me with an effective 2,7 m (9 ft) wide canvas. Because of the height constraint in my “studio” I had to limit the height to 3,7 m(12 ft). It also left me with a nice 3:4 ratio. I started the project on the 18th of January (Coincidentally, and ironically, it was on the morning of January 18th 1974 that Ahmed was found dead…). It took a full day to build the stretcher and to rig the canvas. Then on the 22nd of January I started applying the first coat of primer. Eventually it took two days to apply the three coats of primer. At that stage I had already started planning the painting, but it eventually took another two weeks to finish the planning. (In the meantime, working by day, I started another life size painting of an elephant, but only a cropped image of the head and outstretched ears.) I knew I had only one chance to get the picture right so I decided to do my planning on paper. I first planned the painting in six pieces. (The idea was to trace the design onto the canvas once I was satisfied that my design on paper worked out.) My first paper sketch was done in 6 pieces to make working them manageable. I started tracing my first two “sheets” onto the canvas. It took about an Hour and a half, only to find that the planning had gone wrong somewhere along the way. My elephant was now too big for the canvas… After that it was back to the drawing board. At the time I became slightly discouraged. I had other urgent work to do so I left the elephant for a couple of days before starting a new sketch. This time I decided to divide the sketch into ten, more or less equal sized pieces. The “smaller” pieces were more manageable. It took about two days to transfer the sketch I started the project towards the end of January. It was now the last week in April. Apart from the planning, rigging the canvas and the sketches, other paintings kept me busy and left me with little time for the big elephant painting. I decided to set a deadline for the completion of the elephant painting. I decided to finish the painting by the end of May. That left me with about five weeks to finish the painting. The only space I had to position the canvas was in front of a window, which left me with another problem, and that was that the constant light from the window behind the painting left me with constant light shining through the thin canvas. That meant I could only work by night. I spent about to three to five hours a night painting, but I managed to complete the painting within the five weeks I had given myself. Thinking back on the project I’m happy. Satisfied that I had set myself a goal and achieved it. Now my prayers are that this painting will find a good home. Someone who will appreciate what went into the painting and what it stands for… ________________________________________________________________ The pictures show the finished painting, the Gray scale painting, the oil phase and the finished painting in my studio.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 20:20:18 +0000
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