Chickens!

Well, it's been forever since I've posted anything.  I've had a few posts in the works, but most of them involved intense thinking and writing, and...it's summer.  However, I did (finally) finish the elephant painting that I hinted at back in May!  And, here he is, folks!

In all his glory.  Photoshop, on a Cintiq; several brushes.

This is actually the painting for the cover of the next volume of the university psychology journal for which I edit.  The final product will have some titles and other info on the right side, a quote from a folktale on the left side (see below), and will be folded in half down the middle of the elephant's face.  And the journal will be 6x9 inches, or something like that.  'Twill be great.

The shapes all over his face are a reference to phrenology, a faulty but trendy idea from psychologists in the middle and late 1800s.  Here's a link to the Wikipedia article: head bumps

And, to round off this post, here's the excerpt that will be printed on the back of the journal, from the short tale, "The Blind Men and the Elephant."


"When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?'


"Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an elephant is like a pot.' And the men who had observed the ear replied, 'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.


"Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.


Psychology--trying to understand the human mind and the elephant of what we are--is like this.

EYN