16th June: Composition sketched out on the canvas. Note the rubbing out marks where I moved the elephant more to the right. When considering any composition it's desirable to try to get the viewer's eye to roam in a coherent way around the picture.For instance from the top left, hopefully the eye will be drawn from the leopard down to the buffalo. Then from it's horns up the elephant's trunk and on to the rhino which easily leads on to the back end of the lion and down to the water.
17th June: Here I've started the underpainting. It's basically blocking in rough shades and colours and keeping the paint fairly thin. When this stage is complete I let it dry before starting to work on the detail and changing things that I'm not happy with. At this point I don't like the background to the right of the leopard. It looks a little muddy and needs to blend better with the rhino background. Also the way the leopard's paws are on top of the buffalo's back is creating some "tension" - the buffalo needs a little more space.
18th June: This will now have to be left to dry for around 5 days before I get down to the serious stuff. It's good to cover the canvas though - the last thing an artist wants to see is stark, white canvas!
24th June: Been working on the rhino again today. Building up the detail and extending the background further towards the leopard. This is the exciting bit where the painting starts to come to life.
June 25th: Now it's the leopard.....
June 26th
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June 27th: Nearly there! I was hoping to finish it today but you can't rush these things (and I didn't get up early enough). I've been painting the detail on the lion this afternoon after finishing the elephant yesterday. They are both dominant figures in the painting and required different techniques to get them right. Painting an elephant well is no easy task. Whereas with the lion I try to let the brush do the work with the elephant it's more a case of letting the paint do the work. For example on the lion's mane let the hairs of a long thin brush splay outwards as you paint "with the grain" - that is in the direction of the hair. The very nature of an elephant's hide is rough, tough and coarse so I apply the paint much thicker - the detail is achieved by blobs of lighter paint over darker, sometimes scraped over with a palette knife so that the paint takes on the texture of the canvas.
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Once the buffalo is done tomorrow "the Big Five" will be finished....
June 28th: The finished painting...
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