Elephant: First Pass

Hooray! My blank canvas is no more a blank canvas. It now has an elephant on it.

Now, why is this a big deal? Well, because I have never painted an animal before now and I just didn't have a clue whether I could do it.

This is what's called the first pass of the painting, where the tonal values are created. After that you can add colour.

When I'd finished this, I sent a picture of it to my OH's mobile phone, to show him what I'd been doing all day. He called me and asked me why I had sent him a picture of a monkey.

"Ohhh...." I replied, stung, "....it's actually meant to be an elephant."

Silence.

"Well," he added, "Maybe I didn't look closely enough. I'll have another look and ring you back."

About ten minutes later he called me to say that he's known it was an elephant all along, and I could hear his work colleagues sniggering in the background.

When he got home from work he looked at it and said: "But it's just an elephant." - to which I had to agree. He added, "So when are you going to put the background in?"

I explained that it doesn't need a background as such; it's just an elephant.

"But you can't have nothing in the background," he objected, incredulously. "You'd have something in the background: trees, or bushes. What about a lion?"

The next time I paint anything I just don't think I'll tell him about it at all....