African Elephant Painting: for Tanzania Trip Fundraiser

My husband and two other teachers will be taking a group of high school students on a trip to Tanzania in June. They plan to climb Kilimanjaro and then volunteer at an orphanage in Tanzania. As the trip is expensive, they are doing some fundraisers to offset the costs for the students. I painted an African elephant to donate to their silent auction fundraiser. I titled this one “Les Larmes d’Eléphant” (elephant tears) because it looks as though the elephant is crying. Although, the part of the painting that I'm drawn to the most is actually the smooth contrast created by the light hitting the ear and the shadows around it rather than the eye of the elephant. So why is the title in French? I prefer how the sounds of the words flow together in French versus the more chopped up sound of the title in English. In some ways, this painting goes with the elephant painting (view here) that I did last summer. However, I think that this has much higher contrast and less of a pastel look.

"Les Larmes d'Eléphant" acrylic, 2014

Experimental Elephant Painting

"Elephant Sunset" acrylic, 2013

I originally planned on doing a realistically colored elephant with some plants and other nature details in the background, but of course I got pretty bored with that approach. Instead, I played around with adding color to the elephant in such a way that it almost looks like I used chalk pastel instead of acrylic paint. I decided to do a fiery sunset background because I liked the contrast it made with the pale pastel colors on the elephant. I'm not sure that this painting turned out exactly as I would have liked, but it was certainly an interesting painting to work on.