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How to paint an elk in 2 hours!

First, you gotta get him to stand still! Heh, heh!

Actually, the elk is a statue in our front yard.  I bought it as a birthday gift for Mike when we first moved into the cabin in 2006.  It’s not an expensive bronze statue but simply a metal cast statue.

I got up this morning so excited scared to get him painted I forgot to take a before picture.  The photo above was in 2007 and you can see he has always been one color…dark brown!

Notice he’s having a female visitor;)

In 2009, during rut season, he had a male visitor that tried to fight him and knocked him over into the trees.  Ouch!  The bull walked on up the street all puffy and proud.

How to paint an elk

Since I didn’t take pictures along the way, I’ll have to explain what I did.  Above are the colors I used.

I wanted the body of the elk a bit lighter, legs and the hair around his neck dark and a light metallic finish on the antlers.

Here are tips I use when spraying paint on anything, be it elk or a vase.

1.  Start the spray off the item then move the spray onto the surface.

2.  Mist the item by keeping the can at least 12 inches away.

3.  Use two or more colors for a richer look.  On the elk, I usually had one color in one hand and a deeper or lighter color on the other hand.

4.  You can “erase” mistakes when using two or more colors.

5.  Let any breeze work with your spray.  It was a bit windy while I was painting the elk.  Since the elk would not walk around so I could get his the other side, I had to hold the can at strange angles to let the wind carry the paint.

6.  On textured surfaces hold the can close to the surface and spray across to pick up high areas.

Now to get paint on this elk

To get the effect I wanted easy and quickly on the elk, I started painting the body using the lightest shades.

Then I painted the legs, neck, face, and antlers using the darker shades.  Then I sprayed the nose and hooves with black, the antlers with a light spray of the metallic.

Now to get everything to blend, I went over the body with a spray of medium tones into grooves, and picked up high areas with darker paint {like in number 6!}

To blend the dark areas I did the same with lighter colors giving him highlights!

Viola!  Our elk!

Here’s a picture of a real male elk walking up the street, probably the one that knocked our elk over!

This elk doesn’t eat our plants!

Above is a video made from our backyard {you can see the Pottery Barn lantern sitting on a table in the foreground} the bull is bulging.  We hear this each evening from September to November all night long.

Do you have a statue in your yard?

By the way, we have never named our elk!  Gotta good name for him?  Let us know in comments.