An Elephant of a Different Color

"Possessing a healthy imagination is a necessary ingredient for creativity."  Steve Vai

A couple of weeks ago when I was at Tangle University, I bought a few Dreamweaver stencils. They're heavy-duty stencils made from metal and I suspect that they will survive any abuse I send their way. One of the techniques we learned from Sandy Bartholomew was how to make prints on black paper, using these stencils and scratch-foam. I hope to share more about that in a later post once I receive the foam that I ordered from Dick Blick. In the meantime, I played around with a couple of my new stencils, just tangling them in the traditional way. 

One of the stencils I got was a very cute elephant. I traced the stencil, tangled it, and shaded it, and here is what I got.

Part of him (or her?) was shaded using a graphite pencil, and part using Tombow dual brush markers. Can you tell the difference? I love my elephant, so I decided to try some variations. Next came a colored version, but first I scanned it after tangling and before coloring.

Then I went ahead and created a fantasy elephant, more like something you'd find at Disney, very unrealistic, but nevertheless cute.

I used Tombow markers to add the color. It looks a little better in person, but clearly I need some help and practice with using these markers proficiently, and that's why I registered for Marie Browning's Time to Tangle in Color online class. Haven't had time to begin the class yet, obviously.

For my final elephant in the series, I decided to use gray toned paper from Strathmore. After all, elephants really are gray, unlike the previous one. 

I love how this guy turned out, and always love the look of the shading along with white charcoal pencil highlighting on the toned papers. But I decided to try one more thing. I took my original elephant and played with it in Lightroom to come up with this.

Remember that horse of a different color that Dorothy met in the Emerald City? I guess this is an elephant of a different color!

I had a lot of fun playing with my elephant and can't wait to use him for printing when my new supplies arrive.