Heye - Fauna Fantasies: Elephantaisy 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

An elephant the colour of storm cloud, spotted in gold, coming down a flight of sandstone steps into a jungle that has been assembled rather than grown. Andre Sanchez for Heye's Fauna Fantasies series, portrait format.

What you are looking at

The elephant fills the centre, blue-grey with peach and gold spots across its back and flank, trunk curled up, one front foot down on a worn sandstone step beside a classical stone column. Around it the jungle has been built out of cut-out parts rather than painted: teal agave blades, a huge pink fan palm, crimson and burgundy rubber plant leaves, magenta hydrangea heads, ferns and clipped topiary.

The animals are scattered through it and none of them belong together: a scarlet macaw on the fan palm, a white cockatoo below it, a crane coming in to land at top right and a second crane standing on the steps, a fox on the right hand slope, a hedgehog, and butterflies. Top centre, a gold sunburst medallion with an eye at the middle of it, a line of handwritten French beneath, and a pale sun behind.

What it is like to build

It is a collage, and that is the instruction. Nothing in this picture blends into anything else. Every element has been cut out and laid over the one behind it, so almost every piece has at least one hard edge running through it, and that edge is worth more than the colour of either side of it.

Sort by leaf, and the piles separate themselves. Teal agave blades, the pink fan palm, burgundy rubber plant leaves, small ferns and dark topiary. Five piles, almost no overlap, and between them they account for over half the picture.

The elephant is easy, because nothing else in the frame is that grey and the gold spots are evenly spaced landmarks across it. The hard region is the dark upper corners, where the background goes to near-black foliage with very little in it. Leave those, and use the gold medallion at the top as the anchor for the whole upper third.

Why Heye

Heye are German and licence contemporary artists rather than stock imagery, which is why their catalogue looks unlike everybody else's and why their titles are worth following by series rather than by subject. Fauna Fantasies is Sanchez's, and the pieces are cut for a firm fit, which matters on a collage where two adjacent pieces can be completely different colours and the picture gives you no help at the join.

Specifications

A little context

Digital collage is a young style in this category and it makes a distinctly different puzzle from a painting: hard edges everywhere, no gradients, no soft focus, so it plays to shape and boundary rather than to tone. If it suits you it really suits you. The other title in the series we carry is Giraffolove, and the rest of the brand is at HEYE.

Stock is real and it is in Sydney. Free shipping Australia wide over $150, and free same-day delivery inside 6 km of North Bondi with no minimum.

Built it already? Use the Questions section below and tell us how you found it. Which part fought you, how long it took, and whether you would send someone else to it. We answer every one.