ELEPHANT HEAVEN ON MY DRAWING BOARD

I'm on a roll... after 'The Incredible Journey', which as you may know, took me absolutely ages to complete... I'm really pleased to show you the latest picture on my drawing board. It's early days, but I have a really good feeling about this composition and want to continue to 'flesh' it out, bring it to life and bring it to you. The downside I'm afraid, means the snow leopard head (4th and final in the series) will follow on later this year... sorry.

The references for the elephants were taken from adventures many years apart; our Tanzanian safari just last November and 2002's magical journey to Dame Daphne Sheldricks elephant orphanage where we filmed the 'Wild at Art' DVD. Incidentally the 40 minute film is available to buy from the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's website shop at £10 plus p/p. All money goes back to the orphanage, so If you love elephants, Dame Daphne and my drawings, it's well worth buying. Our spectacular trip to Tanzania was a real elefest, seeing from afar and getting so close to more elephants than ever before. We stayed in the Tarangire National Park for 11 glorious days. It has the highest population of eles per square kilometre in the whole wide world and we saw well over 1,000. Not surprisingly quite a few ideas for future drawings sprung out at me. As soon as I started photographing the baby elephant kneeling with its bum in the air, I knew it had all the ingredients for a winner; comical, wrinkly and with an appealing overall shape. Before I started sketching it though I checked through loads of references I had of baby elephants to see if I could incorporate a couple interacting to improve it even more. I hope you like the results so far. As long as it continues to look good, it will become my next print. I'll start taking pre-orders when almost finished, all going well that should be in a couple of months. Back to the old drawing board...