These are studies for the Toomai picture I'm currently working on. Kali Nag is the star of the show, and I wanted to give him a distinct personality. Also Indian elephants are different than African elephants--smaller ears, two humps on the head instead of one--something I never particularly paid that much attention to before. Also Indian elephants sometimes have these spots, sort of freckles on their trunks and ears, and I decided to give him these markings.
The Tiger.
In the story, there's a brief mention of Kali Nag batting an attacking wounded tiger away with his head. This is a sort of flashback, and through most of the story he's a very old elephant, and I thought this was a good opportunity to focus on what a bad ass he once was. This was also an opportunity to expand on an image that wasn't very detailed in the prose. I had to figure out tiger anatomy, and so I did a few studies to get a better sense of it so I could put the tiger in action. I found some actual footage of a tiger attacking an elephant rider on Youtube which was helpful. I also have an excellent book on animal anatomy, Goldfinger's Animal Anatomy for artists.
