Elephant artist
Apr 7th, 2008 by J. O'Brien
I will comment on this more in a bit…
about time I did. What I find most interesting about this video is how the elephant seems to ponder where he is about to place the brush, or maybe he is just doing it as best he can. And when he darkens the line work, I wonder if that is his intention, if he is thinking that the line work isn’t dark enough. Is he making a mark and then accepting it or deciding to edit it? Is he assessing his work as her paints? Or of course he could just be repeating a task he has done over and over again, or maybe there are really light lines on the paper for him to follow. But I think, after the flower painting is briefly seen in the video, it becomes clear that the elephant is just repeating learned behavior and the apparent self-assessment of his work isn’t really there, or is it?