Tag Archives: Grovewood Gallery

How To Paint an Elephant

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Painting a Pachyderm

On a hot, August day in LA, Tom Moody of KNBC, called and asked if I had ever painted an elephant.

“Why, Tom, bless your bones, you can’t hardly skip down Sunset Boulevard without bumping into one of my nicely decorated elephants.”

I’ve painted many a plaid pachyderm and even a heliotrope hippo or two, but rhinos are of a different hue of humor as they have none. I’ll stick with the thick-skinned brutes with big ears if you don’t mind.

Tom said that KNBC had a circus theme for their fall season soiree, circus tent, sideshows, clowns, and an elephant that needed a paint job. The size-large subject of my pachyderm palette would presently be in the parking lot, and he would appreciate it if I would be there with all the technical artist’s stuff, like brushes, paint, and ladder, to give her a creative, LeoTheColorman makeover.

Pachyderm Brush

My friend and fellow beast-painting artist, Wall Batterton and I, painted the big sweetheart, but it wasn’t like painting a big, rough surface because bristly hair pushed back at our brushes and she soaked up paint like a sponge. Not two coats with a roller.

upfront

She was idly swinging her trunk and pushed me down to my hands and knees. I heard the clump of her feet as I, crab-like, crawled away. She wasn’t mean but a paint job, no ups-no extras, wasn’t on her paint bucket list.

other views

She leaned against the ladder a couple of times, causing us to leap off which put her handler into gales of laughter. The final result was rough but Wall, Topsy, and I, had enough for one shift.

Leo with the brush

The following photos and text is from the August 1966, TV Guide magazine.

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How To Paint An Elephant.
It looks simple, but there is a technique to be observed.

  1. Obtain a Pachyderm. This is the most important ingredient of the formula. It should be live, be female, 8 years old, preferably not frisky, weigh about a ton.
  2. Buy some paint. All colors, good bright ones. Must be water-based in order that it may be washed off later.
  3. Get a brush. A good, big, strong, tough brush. Not one of those fancy, small-palette jobs used on the left bank.
  4. Find a large open space. Remove from area all possessions which you do not wish to be paint splattered.
  5. Acquire 6 feet of heavy chain.
  6. Get a sledgehammer.
  7. Find a large, thick iron bar with a loop on the end, to serve as a stake.
  8. Stationing yourself in no. 4, use no. 6 to drive no. 7 firmly into ground.
  9. Chain no. 1 to no. 7.
  10. Start painting every area in sight on the elephant, being prepared for surprise swipes from her swinging trunk. (Hurts.) Her tail, described by one artist as “a hose wrapped in sandpaper,” is also to be avoided.

Anyway, that’s the 10-step method used in Los Angeles by illustrators Leo Monahan (pictured below) and Wally Batterton for station KNBC, which wanted a brightly colored elephant to introduce its fall season to TV advertisers. The result is seen on these pages. The elephant, which fits the description in no.1, is named Topsy.

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If you’re curious about the color wheel, the elephants are tinted to 50% and blended to full intensity at the center. The ears are the color of the adjacent elephant. The color wheel is mounted on black to enhance the colors.

Elephant Pull Toy

The elephant pull toy is the first of a new series of antique toys. The colors are applied with a splatter airbrush technique with contrasting hues of both warm and cool but similar dark and light comparisons (value).

The colored brush is a symbol of the fun I had in a colorful career.

Thanks for visiting me…

Leo

I am never content with what I know,
only with what I can find out.

The Elephant Pull Toy is at the Cut, Bend, Fold, ColorColorColor exhibit. $700.
The Brush at: $200 (Sold)

I am represented by the Grovewood Gallery in the Asheville area.

 

 

 

 

 

A Summer Day, Work & Play

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Dear Reader,

May 25th. I remember anticipating the coming summer vacation when in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Shoes and shirts off, strap overalls. No underwear until school started in the autumn. Keystone, SD, in WWII was a dream for boys. The Black Hills were our playground with the granite mountains, ponderosa pines, streams and lakes, all in sight of Mount Rushmore.

Playtime was precious because the men had gone to war, and we were left to take up the slack. We had chores, but not one of us felt put upon. I fed chickens, gathered eggs, cleaned the coop, slopped the pigs (I was scared to death of the big pigs), sawed logs with a small, one-man crosscut saw, split the wood, and put it in a wheelbarrow. I wheeled it across a wide farmyard, across the creek and into our house and my grandfather’s house. I had my own small axe, which I threw until I broke the handle.

I had to fill the wood-box for the cook stoves and for the pot-bellied heating stoves in both houses. That was a lot of sawing, splitting and wheeling for a little kid, around eight to ten trips in all. If you didn’t finish, you would be out there in rain or snow until you did. A few of the boys had cows to milk, butter to churn, and horses to take care of on top of everything else.

Guernsey Cows

In spite of the work, we always fished, hiked and climbed those granite giants. This cow color wheel is my symbol of those days and how we felt about life. The colors include the three primaries yellow, red and blue as well as the secondary hues orange, violet and green. All are at full intensity (purity), as bright as a bunch of balloons.

I put black spots on the cows because I always liked the black-and-white Guernsey cows best. We didn’t know about cow tipping, but we did know about dried cow-pie tossing, especially at each other. A laughing boy’s organic frisbee.

Vladimir&Estragon

These figures were done for the run of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” for which I had done the set. Vladimir and Estragon remind me of us boys waiting for summer vacation, which, like Godot, never seemed to come. Sometimes the things you really crave never show up; I work in the moment and stuff shows up.

The figures are roughly sketched and then drawn with a knife, cutting them from museum board, which is usually used for acid-free mats. The strips are torn from waste paper; I save every scrap that I think has possibilities. I want the striping to look unplanned, with great variations in texture. The colors are random, but there is always play between warm and cool, dark and light, bright and neutral. The color scheme is dark, which enhances those variations and comparisons; I quit when it yells at me to stop.

It’s as if my design and color knowledge were in a fanny pack, and when I need a solution and reach for it, it’s always there. Serendipity is my guide, creating life as I want it to be. Whatever happens should happen naturally.

The boy, Pozzo & Lucky

Here is the rest of the cast of “Godot” on a dark background of neutral burnt orange, dry-brushed over a deep forest green with some black in it. There are the boy, Lucky, and Pozzo. I think of them as Jack, Raymond and Jim, or any of the boys in Keystone.

Sadly, there are only two or three of us left.

Thanks for visiting me.

leo

The two “Godot” pieces are available for $850 each.
They are varnished, unframed and should remain so.
leomonahan@tds.net

The Grovewood Gallery is now representing me in the Asheville, NC area

Vladimir