When you think you are alone in the Kruger National Park, you’re not! There they were in all their glory.
Be prepared to see animals:
When you rush through a wild national park you won’t see anything. You have to want to see something and look more carefully.
Don’t drive quickly. Slow down. The trick is to look through the bush and trees, like having tunnel vision. Tunnel your eyes and focus between things. Then you are more likely to see something.
Any slight movement is bound betray an animal or bird. But at that particular moment, for us, on seeing the next animal, it wasn’t moving at all. It was standing dead still. Well I hope not!
It was a lone Wildebeest:
And been alone is a dangerous thing. If lions had found it all alone, they weren’t hesitate to pursue and kill it.
So it must have had a reason for been all by itself. Maybe it fell asleep and didn’t hear the rest of the herd move away.
Anyway we moved on again and it was sometime later before we saw…
An elephant:
We were so please to find an elephant, and so close to the road too. Wasn’t that lucky, we thought.
It was coming up out of the bush on our right hand side of the car. It looked somewhat restless and that made us feel rather nervous.
It was checking us out and perhaps deciding to do something about us.
We didn’t want to get too close to it. You never knew if it would charge us! That would be very scary, especially as it was very tall and huge. It seemed to tower over us from its great height.
It looked like it was alone. So it could have been a young bull in musk. When it started to paw and scrape the ground with its fore foot, we thought we better get out of there… in a hurry!
An oil painting:
That elephant was so impressive, that I thought I would like to paint a picture of it from the photos I had taken of it that day. And I did, some time ago and its sold, sorry. But here is a copy photo of that painting. Here it is:
How I painted it:
You can see from the composition, it isn’t the same as in the photos. The reason been, is that I only used the photos as a visual aid, as an emotional inspiration, and filled in the rest with a little imagination.
To make the front elephant look larger, I pushed back the background and made the family of elephants and baobab tree look smaller. To give the front elephant more importance, I also misted the background somewhat with dust effects.
The reality of it is:
We didn’t actually see the other elephants or the baobab tree that I had put in the painting’s background. I invented them to give the whole scene a tourist attraction and an impression of the wilds of Africa!
You see, when painting such dramatic paintings, you can’t just sit pretty in front of a dynamic scene and paint it while the elephant is actually rushing up to you. You have to take what you know and create the rest with passion.
Hope you enjoy it.
The owner of the painting loves it to bits. Hope he doesn’t mind me showing it to you.
What a great photos
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So what did you like about them? Always want to know what people like, so I can continue giving them something special.
I love elephants so an amazing big animal and in general nature photos are one of my favorite thing
I like that picture of the beast and elephant particularly the painting, you are really a good artist, The painting Look just like colour photography printed.
That chap that bought that elephant painting, asked me recently, if I had another elephant painting! So I suppose I must paint another sometime... but blogging on Steemit keeps me rather busy! ;)
I love your kruger park adventure. I love to see animals. Lion is very dangerous animal. Elephant is my favourite. I m big fan of your painting. Oil painting is my favourite. Very beautiful combinations of your painting. Thanks for sharing.@artguru.
Thank you for your kind words.
Elephants are very impressive aren't they!
Beautiful art.
I like it this post.
I love art.
Thanks for sharing this post.
I appreciate your valuable post..
Good day..
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Thank you. I appreciate your opinion. Hope I can keep producing what you like.
Visiting zoo with wild animal is full of enjoy but it requires extra care, you don't want to mess with those animals if something went wrong.
Kruger National Park, is no zoo. It is miles upon miles of open wild countryside. You are not allowed out your cars as you drive through, because you too could be eaten by the lions, hyenas or wild dogs.
Woah! That elephant looks absolutely huge! I would love to see an elephant in real life, especially in the wild. I bet that wildebeest is also massive! African wildlife is the most spectacular in my opinion :)
The painting you have done is wonderful, I love it! I particularly love the baobab tree and the elephants in the background being slightly out of focus compared to the main elephant, such a beautiful painting! I think this is my favourite from all of the ones I have seen from you :)
Later in our trip (future post) you will see a mean threatening male buffalo, standing his ground facing our car full on. There will be another oil painting of that too.
Awesome! I look forward to it :)
I liked the photo of Oil painting.Really gorgeous.
Thank you for saying you liked it.
very nice painting and great photography
Know you see why I called my Steemit name artguru! I love painting and I have my own website too: www.adafagan.co.za. At present there is only one page there, because I'm redesigning it... when I can get time off from blogging here on Steemit!! Used to post great art tips there and free art eBook downloads too.