Why We Like Elephants (The totally random post)

Totally random question: Why are elephants attractive from an artistic standpoint?  Certainly there are more exciting animals in the animal kingdom.  Is there something going on here in our collective consciousness?  They are certainly exotic and literally "stand out" in real life as well as cultural depictions.  We are exposed to elephants from an early age (at least I was).  We see elephants at the circus as children, we see them in Tarzan movies and Disney's Dumbo.

They make really loud noise with their trunks.  As kids we can imitate the elephant trunk with our arm.  We see elephants in episodes of Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry and most other cartoons.  Elephants are smart and wise, they never forget, and apparently they are afraid of mice (or least that is what cartoons teach us).  We also see mammoths and elephants in cave art and religious art, so there is permeation of the elephant in human history and human artistic expression (this is starting to sound like bullshit, even to me).

Ganesh

Anyway, here is a more realistic idea about what makes elephants attractive to draw.  They are big, exaggerated animals, so they are very forgiving, especially when drawing a caricature or comic or cartoon.  Elephants have big hulking bodies, long trunks, and big ears.  Their signature pieces of anatomy are easily made with simple geometric shapes.  Instead, think of drawing a tiger or lion.  The feline form has many more intricate and specific aspects in terms of anatomy.  The feline face looks a certain way.  The shape and form of felines have a certain aspect of movement about them even when they are sitting still.  How do you effectively capture that?  Lions and tigers have wonderful muscle tone under flowing furred skin.  Watch the shoulder blades of a female lion stalking its prey.  Beautiful.  But back to elephants.  Again, elephants are much easier to put down on paper.  Large torso, four thick legs, trunk, ears, tail.  Draw some wrinkles and you're done.  They are also not like other animals.  If you were to draw a woodchuck, a beaver, and a prairie dog sitting around a table playing poker, how do you know which animal is which?  Okay, maybe you give the beaver buck teeth, but otherwise there are many rodent-like small mammals that look enough alike.  Draw a vole having lunch with a chipmunk.  I dare you.

Here is another Bruce Blitz YouTube video.  Pay attention to the simple shapes he uses to draw the mammoth.  Look at how exaggerated the trunk and tusks are.  We still immediately recognize the animal.   I also think it is kind of cool that this clip, along with the one I have included on this blog where Bruce draws an dinosaur, have connections to natural history and museums.  I am a firm believer in reinforcing academic factual education with fun art projects.

And not to be outdone, this elephant does self-portraits?  This is kind of freaky.