Friday 19 June 2015

Elephant No. 139: Painting with Nail Polish






I'm next to useless at painting my nails, so there will be no elephants on fingernails today. However, given the number of bottles of nail polish I own, I thought I'd try painting on canvas instead.

I have every colour you can imagine—although, strangely, never the specific colour I want on my nails—so I had a lot of colour choices at my disposal. My only rule was that I had to use the brushes that come with the nail polish. No point, after all, in ruining a perfectly good paintbrush.

Not having ever tried this before, I decided to use a small canvas board, measuring 5 x 7 inches (12.7 x 17.8 cm). I also thought it might be good to make a light pencil sketch to guide my work, and decided to draw from the photograph below.


African elephant.
Source: animalfactguide.com

I began by using a few pale blues and greens, with a sort of drybrush technique. I had originally expected that I'd be applying the colours more thickly, but I became timid when faced with actually committing nail polish to canvas.




Where the nail polish was a bit opaque, I didn't really like the effect. In the end, I used the nail polish brushes very gently, barely touching the surface. This also let the texture of the canvas show through, which I thought was interesting. Who knew you could get a watercolour effect with nail polish straight out of a bottle?

I used a surprising number of colours, as you can see from the photograph below. Some of them were more opaque than others — for example, three different pale blues that looked very similar in the bottles were remarkably different in opacity when applied to the canvas.




Although I avoided using glitter nail polish, the final work has a definite surface shimmer.

 


Despite my hesitant brushstrokes, I like the final elephant quite a lot. Next time I think I'd be a bit bolder with the colour—and I'd definitely have better ventilation—but as a first attempt at painting with nail polish, it was kind of fun.





Elephant Lore of the Day
In many parts of Asia, there are yearly festivals to honour elephants. Most of these include games, an elephant parade, and an elephant beauty contest.

Competing elephants are painted with bright water-based paint, and are dressed in embroidered silks and brocades. For many elephants, the finishing touch is a coat of bright acrylic paint on the elephant's toenails.


Loktantrakali getting her toenails painted, Sauraha, Nepal, December 2011.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk


To Support Elephant Welfare

5 comments:

  1. Our manufacturer is covering area of 18,250 square meters (as big as two and a half football field), 10 production lines and more than 300 employees. custom made nail polish bottles

    ReplyDelete
  2. Now day, absolutely everyone is searching out a new but well settled and a fulfillment flow for his or her career. after I got here to this blog, I definitely inspired through all of the facts factors noted right right here. thank you for this assist. nagellack online shop Schweiz

    ReplyDelete
  3. not anything live all of the time. Then why to maintain identical patter of hard work over and over. Why to copy identical method for extraordinarily essay. Use range approach for extraordinary subjects because of the fact every trouble has its private which means that. hold such posts on. nail online shop

    ReplyDelete
  4. Creativity of writer is purely impressive. It has touched to the level of expertise with his writing. Everything is up to the mark. Written perfectly and I can use such information for my coming assignment.
    elephant protection charities

    ReplyDelete
  5. not anything live all of the time. Then why to maintain identical patter of hard work over and over. Why to copy identical method for extraordinarily essay. Use range approach for extraordinary subjects because of the fact every trouble has its private which means that. hold such posts on. Nagelstudio Solothurn

    ReplyDelete