An Elephant, On the Other Hand...

We had a demo at our last Art Quilt Group on use of colored pencils on fabric.  I was intrigued and wanted to give it a try, but had to give some thought to the subject matter.  My first thought was to do a carousel or circus pony because of the color and embellishment possibilities.  I found inspiration for a painting years ago from the cover of Liz Story’s CD Escape of the Circus Ponies, which has a beautiful painting by Mary Shivers on the cover.  The painting I did those years ago was of carousel horses coming to life and breaking free of the carousel, so I thought revisiting that theme for the sake of another medium would be a rehash and decided to do a circus elephant.

The thing that appealed to me about Ms. Shivers’ painting was the expression and apparent freedom of approach – something I’ve not had much luck with in my artwork.  Dang those control issues and need to conform to how something is supposed to look!  Too much left brain (analytical) thinking.  Clearly I’ll need to work on breaking out of the mold.

My initial sketches were okay, but not at all expressive, or even stylish.  I kept working at it, made numerous attempts, and had some progress in terms of it looking more realistic, but no luck being more stylized and free.   In the past I’ve experimented with drawing with my eyes closed.  That’s definitely wresting control from the left brain!  I gave that a try and came up with some pretty amusing results.  They’re loose, free, and childlike.  The head and trunk of one would be nice, and the legs and tail of another interesting…so why not just pull those elements together into one wildly expressive elephant…well, because the “pulling together” invariably resulted in subtle adjustments here and there, and those of course removed the spontaneity and unstructured look.



Elephant with Headpiece & Blanket

I had to give it a rest for a time.  I’m right handed, so later I tried drawing the elephant left handed in an attempt to be less controlled and possibly look a little wonky and stylized.  It didn’t – it looked better than the first ones where I was trying to draw an elephant – so I went with it.  I think somewhere in the back of the right side of my brain there was processing going on and pulling from the previous eyes-closed exercises to more accurately envision an elephant.  It wasn’t crazy, wild, expressive, or gestural, but I was satisfied with the results and chose to go with it.

The elephant was drawn on tissue paper and then placed on top of a bleached muslin-batting-muslin sandwich.  The outline was sewn with regular stitching (feed dogs engaged) and using black thread.  Next the tissue paper was removed, feed dogs were dropped for free motion quilting, and I went to town on the wrinkles, headpiece, and decorative back blanket.  None of those elements were sketched on the fabric beforehand, so it was all improvised on the go, and it came out surprisingly well.  Another round of stitching was added to the outer edge to make the elephant stand out.  From there I used colored pencils to fill in the headpiece and blanket and sealed them with a clear matte acrylic paint.

The gray of the body was done with watercolor pencils.  The moisture of the sealer dissolved the pigment and gave a watercolor effect.  More free motion quilting was done on the body with a lighter gray thread.

I punched up the colors for more contrast by using a brush and Daler Rowney FW acrylic inks, as well as some metallics for sparkle.

I’m still contemplating the next steps and how to finish this project.  Embellishment should be a breeze.