Thursday, November 17, 2011

guest post- how to draw this elephant from Carla Sonheim

I have asked a few of my creative friends to help me out with my blog here and there during my time with a new baby and today's guest post comes to you from Carla Sonheim

How to Draw this Elephant
elephant1

1. First, draw this:

elephant2

2. Then, continuing on the same piece of paper, draw four more similar elephants (hoping for one that has a bit more personality to it):


elephant3

3. If you're still not wow'ed, do a page of one-liners*, an exercise inspired by Pablo Picasso that helps you practice putting your subconscious in the driver's seat:
elephant4
4. Decide to take a grumpy one further and apply some Oaxacan-Inspired Embellishing...
elephant5

5. ...but go for a walk first.

6. Go ahead and pick up that piece of trash that reminds you of an elephant (gross as it may be)....


elephant6

elephant7

7. Now render that shape in watercolor on cold-press (textured) watercolor paper, leaving the eye white.



How to Draw this Elephant

8. Finally add some pencil shading and line work (being sure to put in that grumpy expression you liked earlier)!

* Here's a quick video of how I do one-liners (borrowed from my Imaginary Creatures online class held in August!).



Carla Sonheim is a painter, workshop instructor and author of "Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun" and creator of "The Art of Silliness," a popular online drawing course. She lives in Seattle, where she shares space with her photographer husband, a game-playing teenager, and, pitifully, her blog.



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14 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is really fun. Thank you Carla for this wonderful guest post!
Have a nice day.

Kathryn Zbrzezny said...

Awesome! Carla can make trash fun, but does she ever make drawing FUN!!

pay for papers said...

very interesting. as always))

siga said...

Cool! At the beginning I was expecting something like Antoine De Saint-Exupery elephant from "The Little Prince" ;) I have to try this, finding animal in the different shape.

☼ Carolina ☼ said...

hola!
NICE!!!!!!!!!!

Jana said...

I'm loving Carla's book! Have been using it as playtime - moving outside my usual pastel/watercolor-painting-for-sale life and playing with her drawing labs. Thanks for this post!

Amber B said...

I just bought this lab book for my personal and classroom use! Loved seeing the blog, thanks for sharing!!

Amanda Trought said...

Carla, great post, got my book, looking forward to working through it. Blessings, Amanda

Art Blog
Amanda - Realityarts-Creativity

cathyb said...

Alisa = thanks for posting this - I have had this book on my Amazon wish list for so long and now that I see this I will absolutely go and purchase it!!

Carina said...

ohhhh love that Ellie!!! and love even more the how to :D :)
Thanks for having such an inspirational blog :) ♥

Kay said...

haha..this made me laugh out loud

liniecat said...

what a fun thing to do..........odd though ...your 'trunk'.......I took to be the back left leg
and I 'saw' the trunk on the far left. The head, which was partially lowered and the trunk trailing to the ground........had an ear flapping wildly up above it there on the left.........guess thats why each of us would do a different elephant painting of that particular scrap of paper!
Must try this......cracking idea!

Sarah Anderson said...

I can't recommend this book highly enough, I just LoVe it. Great post on drawing elephants :)

Sarah Anderson said...

I can't recommend this book highly enough, I just LoVe it. Great post on drawing elephants :)

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