THIS BLOG HAS BEEN RETIRED

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN RETIRED. I'm still going to be keeping it up here, though-- there's some pretty cool old stuff on it. That said, if you want to keep up to date with me, please go to www.georgeoconnorbooks.com.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Have you seen this yet?

Maybe I'm naive, maybe I'm a rube, but this video really blew my mind. I see that a lot of the talkback regarding this video is of people saying that the elephant was taught to paint this way; and that may be true, but to my eye, well, to my eye it doesn't seem that the elephant is blindly following a learned behavior. Watch the video, and aside from it being a pretty wonderful drawing, notice the way the elephant revisits certain lines to increase their weight, note the fact that there's not a single line out of place. I doubt if most people were taught to copy a drawing they could do it with so much grace.


2 comments:

Maria Mercado said...

I was going to post this, too (in fact I think I will), after I found it on James Gurney's blog. I showed the video to Adam and he was STUNNED. That elephant is more sure of his linework than I am.

George O'Connor said...

Yeah, I really don't know what to make of it. Even if that's a learned behavior, that elephant has definitely made it its own. Not a wrong line in the whole piece. Arta cried when I showed it to her.