There were no drawing
materials available to me when I was a lad, so the blank pages I found in bound
books is where I scrawled a few lines, often writing my brother’s name - as if our
parents could be fooled so easily!
There was a book in our house,
Cole’s Funny Picture Book that I particularly
liked and often looked at. No coloured pages, some were old fashioned
photographs, but mainly pen and ink drawings, some hidden pictures within
pictures and some funny captions and poems. I still regard it as a classic!
I can draw a bit, not well,
but well enough to be roped in from time to time to illustrate for some local,
small scale event. I draw or doodle for my own entertainment and regard myself
as a rank amateur although sometimes I really, really want to draw very well
but never come up to my own expectations, which makes me appreciate what other
people can do.
Eyes usually glaze over when I
wax lyrical about those drawings in the Chauvet Cave, France. The horses and
lions are so accurately drawn and coloured that it is hard to believe ancient cave
dwellers created them some 40 000 years ago.
I still look at those drawings
and wonder those primitive people, possibly living among Neanderthals, using
charcoal to accurately draw animals on cave walls that they had seen outside in
the wild. Where did that talent come from?
In this modern world, how is
creativity explained? It’s not found in a bottle or picked up in the meadow
like mushrooms!
Art is an obvious expression
of creativity, and creativity is all around us. We don’t celebrate enough the
very clever people around us.
I always thought those
paintings of the masters, were done in the fashion of the day and while
undoubtedly remarkable, a true likeness is missing. There is a person with a YouTube
name of Jude Maris who has photoshopped some famous figures like Anne Boleyn.
It’s a fun thing to look at (and in a way a good feeling that someone see the
need) and it demonstrates creativity using new technology.
Comics were not regarded as an
art form yet I copied Walt Disney characters, like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, drawing the outline in
Indian ink and then carefully used coloured pencils.
Sandra, a girl at school had
much more talent, and she showed me how to draw Superman, from comics we had graduated to, also Batman, Capt.
Marvel and those cowboys, Buck Jones and Kit Carson. Even without colour those
comics were brilliantly illustrated, and today the artwork in modern comics, is
yet another level altogether.
My favourite centrefold is a
series of paintings by Joy Adamson of Born
Free fame, the book is Kenya Trees,
Shrubs and Lianas. I burrow my nose into all sorts of plant ID books and my
other favourites are the accurate black and white Nancy Adams illustrations. I
know, boring!
Then there are other artists who
produce absolutely lifelike drawings or paintings of flora, fauna and portraits
– photorealistic. You would think
theirs would be household names!
The excitement of old movies caused
the viewer to overlook the older painted movie sets of some westerns and even The Wizard of Oz. But on another level is the realistic
perspective art used in the first Star
Wars movie when old Ben Kenobi disabled the tractor beam adding immensely
to the viewer experience. We remember the director and the stars but not the
artist(s).
Dragons are currently popular
with kids, so I wrote a story for my granddaughters and needed a picture of one
as an illustration. I found a new-to-me form of art form called Fantasy Art and it dumfounded me. A lot
of the subject material is not necessarily my cup of tea, but the talent of the
artists is immediately obvious.
A mate showed me on Images, Julian Beever’s Coke bottle pavement
drawing and the 3D effect he had manages to produce. There are many other
pavement artists and art, so given the opportunity I air my new-found knowledge
to show friends and colleagues who may not have seen this form of art. While I
have them hooked to the computer, I can’t resist showing those cave drawings of
horses and lions even if they don’t show much enthusiasm.
There are so many forms of
creativity and talent out in the big wide world that really should be celebrated.
No doubt about it, there are a lot of clever buggers out there!
Still, whoever it was that
made those drawings in the Chauvet Cave, had a sense of art some 30 000 years
before the wheel was invented.
Makes you think, eh?
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