An Artist from the Animal Kingdom - Should we be worried for the right reasons?

As an independent who seeks to thrive in an ever-growing competition of today... a look at this video amuses me!

Should I worry that this guy here has a better niche following than some of us? Or worry about who is making this a niche market which surely should be lucrative not for the artist.

Just a couple of days ago one of my associates were mentioning about these amazing artists with their skills in Thailand. That would be a painting made by an Elephant.

Today as I was making my routine weekend Google of a few pending research topics, I was amazed to come across this Elephant guy make this piece ... which looked like a piece of art (to humans) or a master-piece? Though am not sure what it looks like to the artist here.



I am in awe wondering how on earth is it able to get the forms right. Just watch it closely, how in it's mammoth form puts all its delicate energy into drawing the lines. Just look at how it has one of its legs suspended in sheer concentration. For a moment, it looked all normal to me, until i saw the Mohawk walk into the scene with a Kane....Now I look at it in horror... is he overseeing his slave at work??

Looking at this, I can't help thinking, why would an elephant pick up a paint brush and start painting, just like that. If it did that was just perfect for all of us to be dumb-founded. Would it do that in its natural habitat when it needs to relax? Of course not! This is no relaxation for an animal!? Though it is said that an elephant thinks like a human being in certain ways. All I know from my experience hailing from a part in India where there exists a natural habitat of Elephants, is that they love to eat plantains in loads and grace on grass and would do anything to have that. At the same time they also obey when they see the stick. There has been millions of instances when they have attacked if they cross the border line into insanity where the Mohawk has been hurled by the elephant to his death. Alas! what do they do? They take the elephant away and shoot it down. Failing to look at who is performing these acts of insanity in the first place. Like any domestic animal it can be domesticated and they respond best to kindness but this is no response to kindness!! Is it? What do you think? I suddenly felt a sense of sadness not because of a fear that my profession of art could get wiped out, but the thought of depriving the freedom of another earthling for the sheer entertainment and commercial gain for human beings.

Though I must commend the skill of the trainer, I am pretty sure these Elephant Artists have got through an extreme amount of trauma doing an abnormal thing like this. I can think of many comparisons to human artists getting compelled to take to art and stardom against their will. At the end of the day they are humans trained by humans. But animals are more close to an innocent being. They get obedient against their will if they fear their extinction. This is what I see in this video

But elephants are such beautiful beings and humans could derive such pleasure by doing so many other things by their majestic presence on earth. Provide a safe habitat for example. This is what I did as an artist with my elephant heroes. I did sketches of them on my child-like visits to the zoo quite often like this sketch here:

And this is one of my comic experiences on one of my zoo trips again with a friend.

This is my take as an artist who loves and dotes on animals and pets. What is yours!!?

This week I lost one of my family pets "Gypsy - our golden retriever" who had a helpless demise after 10 days on saline. What I feel for Suda - the elephant (which animal writes in English!) is most profound when I grieve for gypsy.

I will have Gypsy's portrait posted here one of these days. And some of her funny videos. See you soon! and thanks for sharing my thoughts.

Daily Life Color Theory - Color Harmony

This post addresses an important element in Colo(u)r Theory. ...COLO(U)R HARMONY... after I just figured that my first post on Colo(u)r Theory has received at least 6000 hits. Thank you  for letting me know that you are interested to know more about Colo(u)r-theory and perhaps how I apply it in my everyday life as an artist.

In my first post
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5217181103710191916#editor/target=post;postID=8067908127082557533  I only covered the basic colour wheel, where I featured my new bird pets who still sit chirping and making my garden (oh!) so colo(u)rful and happy, with a new born looking out of its peep hole "green with envy" ;o) watching his other colourful counterparts chirping around. His daddy is green and mommy a nice sunny yellow. Thanks to these lovely birds the place is bubbling with colo(u)rs.

As a second part to my colour-theory post, here today I am featuring one of my real-life art-pieces, showcasing the newest of my pets "Reji" a Siamese Fighter Fish.

May I proudly say that nature has marinated him with these amazing tones...a lovely crimson red, ultramarine blue and deep violet, with a silvery sky blue shimmer along his streamlined scales. An absolute beauty with a proud tantrum!


Here is what I captured of an unforgettable Betta in one of his most temper-filled moments!

I am not to blame for his anger, that is just the way he is by nature a very aggressive territorial aquarium fish.

While I make him a pretty-looking inhabitable space and study his character when finding ways to make him a less stressed-out personality, I am thankful to him for giving me a very colourful painting you see here. It was quite therapeutic while I made it, for the creative-dabble of cool and warm shades in a colorful musical harmony. In his silky display I could almost visualize the harmonizing currents of water around him perfectly obedient to the velvety direction of his delicate majestic fins swaying floret after floret.

This leads me to touch upon a very important topic today.

Colo(u)r Harmony

Colo(u)r is like music. A painting or an art-piece too possesses harmonizing in the aesthetic visual sense like in music compositions. 12 notes in music is just the same as the palette of colo(u)rs.

The art of practicing colo(u)r harmony is in knowing which colo(u)r to use, in what order and proportion. It involves scientific and aesthetic methodologies. Some colo(u)r combinations facilitate us to study all possible variations at once.

Whether you are here to seek inspiration for your next art masterpiece or an design layout for an ad or a cover design or even an inspiration for your wardrobe, it is suggested to start with the overall sense of the effect you are looking for... subtle or stunning, silent or striking, cool or hot.

This week I will be back covering several aspects of colo(u)r speaking of how it effects the mood, based on size and structure and purpose.

See you again very soon.