Today's painting is elephant and mahout walking.. it's a common scene in Kerala and many artists have painted it. My inspiration is this picture below.. but it's a night scene and I don't have enough colours to make dark so instead I painted it as a morning scene with fig and rain.
It's a lovely scene.. will paint that some time later 😁
Sketch
Sketching figure and animal is key here.. the rest is Watercolor techniques.
Started with background the tree covering all three sides with take the focus to the center.. and the light will be from back.. so the eyes will fall on the subject
Added the road in front and puddle. Normally I use Payne's grey and violet for road.. both this colours were not available with me today so I had to experiment and come up .. this time Prussian blue scarlet lake and burnt seinna came to rescue. Next was to paint the elephant and man.
This is the first time I painted an Indian elephant in recent times.. was a common thing for us in childhood to draw elephant. In fact elephant might be the first animal kids in Kerala draw! Prussian blue is a colour which I rarely use so for me it was a great learning how it mixes.. and then I found that it fades a lot when it dries.. so the soft tone was perfect for the elephant skin. It just that we have to add more layers to make it dark.. and I'm fine with it.
Here it's the rain and this mood doesn't need warm or dark tone.
Final
Total time: 90min
10x14 in 440gsm
Handmade cotton paper
4/2022