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.

Coloring a Comic Book Page

If you do anything with comic books, you have probably been to Newsarama.  I am pretty pissed off at them right now, so they are not even getting a URL link.  They have the video below embedded on their site, but I am embedding straight from YouTube.  Why am I pissed?  I originally wanted to show the video of Jim Lee using the iPad to do a sketch of Wonder Woman, showing how the iPad can be used as a creative art tool.  Of course, it helps to be an awesome artist like Jim Lee, but anyway.  So, you can find the title of the intro with the video link through Newsarama's website, but the link is dead.  You can search Google, and again, dead.  If you look at the cached version through Google, you get teased with the image and video link, but again, dead.

But I digress.  Below is an awesome and informative video showing how Tony Avina, a professional comic colorist, colors a page. 

We can't all have a team of colorists laying down prep work for us, or have superfast computers with super expensive software, but there are options out there for the budget-minded digital artist.  That will have to be my next post: free or low cost graphic software.

Bruce Blitz Cartooning TV Show

I remember watching lots of Public Television as a kid.  There seemed to be more to learn from TV back in the 80's.  You had Sesame Street, and Mister Rogers of course.  And I loved, and I mean loved Reading Rainbow.  But I also remember watching the Frugal Gourmet (before the Food Network existed and before his whole sex scandal thing), and I also remember more than a couple art shows, namely The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross and Cartooning with Bruce Blitz.  Enjoy this YouTube clip.

These were not great shows, but they were really cool when you were a kid, and all you had to do was pick up a marker and some paper.  You could learn something about lines, and shape, and composition and finishing a piece of art in pretty easy steps.  I guess you can get all this online these days, but with all the crap on TV these days, I think there should be room for more art instruction programs, especially since due to school budget cuts, Art classes and programs are constantly being downsized and cut.  You can still buy Bruce Blitz supplies, including pre-lined cartoon and comic boards.  Since Blitz cartoons a dinosaur, I figure I would include a link to one of the classic children's illustrated books, Syd Hoff's Danny and the Dinosaur.

Be on the look-out for my own How-To segments on drawing, cartooning, and how to fill a fountain pen (this is extremely exciting to me).