We all have our Big Fish stories……What’s yours?
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Posts Tagged ‘nature’
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“The day is done, and the darkness, Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward, From an eagle in his flight” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The eagle is inked, it’s time to fly…
…..
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“This shark, swallow you whole. Little shakin’, little tenderizin’, an’ down you go.” ~ Robert Shaw as Quint in Jaws(1975)
Alright enough of that. Really, I just wanted to convey the bad boy allure of this apex predator with the imprint of my Simian Style rather than reinforce the stereotypical idea of the malicious man-eating shark. This stereotype has been terribly harmful to sharks which by some estimates are dwindling in number at a rate of 100 MILLION per year killed as a result of human fishing and also deliberate shark fining.
Shark fining, for those of you who don’t know, often involves catching a shark, removing it’s fins and disposing of it’s carcass overboard to slowly drown. The fins are used to prepare the Asian delicacy of shark fin soup and sadly that’s where the money is. Sharks are a majestic creature and they deserve our respect and awe not to be inhumanely savaged, mutilated, and killed for their fins.
Some of you may remember that a while back I posted a logo I designed for a fantastic organization called Iemanya Oceanica which seeks to preserve sharks and rays. They have numerous great programs ranging from “adopting” your very own shark to scholarships and educational outreach. I encourage you to check them out to further educate yourself on the predicament of sharks worldwide.
Finally, I found this great video called the “Death of a Deity” by Joe Romeiro of 333 productions which does a superb job portraying how incredible sharks are, how vital they are to the ecosystem of coral reefs, the inhumanity of shark fining and also the degree to which generally human activity is damaging sharks and the ocean at large.
More Jay Zuck Oceanica:
Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim,
I wonder how we look to him.
~ Ogden Nash
Not too long ago I displayed a charcoal drawing of a Rhino to which a friend of mine teased, “That looks more like Rhino butt to me.” Fair enough, but I have decided more nature butt is in order.
“Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air” ~ Carl Sandburg
Dive, dive, dive! Jay Zuck’s Sketch of the Day is going on a little underwater excursion and who knows the next time we’ll be up for some proper air.
Today, we have a seal abstracted in my Simian Style (See “Elephant Style Elephante” for some land based Simian action). I drew it with a Tombow brush pen and also a water brush pen while enjoying some assorted sea life at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. I’m telling y’ah, the bounty of the sea is at least as great for the artist as it is for the fisherman.
Dive Into The Depths of Jay’s Sea Life Related Posts:
From whence arrived the praying mantis?
From outer space, or lost Atlantis?
glimpse the grin, green metal mug
at masks the pseudo-saintly bug
~ Ogden Nash
I was thinking of drawing an alien, but then I decided to draw a preying mantis sketch instead. Like much of the insect world it is pretty alien-like and I got the same satisfaction as if it truly was an alien creature.
The word Mantis comes from the Ancient Greek word for seer. The French believe that if you are lost the praying mantis points the way home while Arabs contend it points the way to Mecca. I believe that I will be drawing a Praying Mantis again sometime soon.
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“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.” ~ Pablo Picasso
The zoo is one of the most visually stimulating places for an artist to visit. There is something to be said for seeing a variety of animals from all over the world with your own eyes. I make numerous pilgrimages to the Los Angeles Zoo during the course of a year and I think an annual membership to your local zoo is a great investment for any artist.
The Zoo is actually the place where I developed and refined what I call Simian Style. It is a quick, but rewarding way to capture the essence of animals who are in constant motion.
For more examples of Simian Style or Simian related works I encourage you to peruse the following at your leisure:
“To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior’s spirit. It takes power to do that.” ~ Carlos Castaneda
I have always believed that a study in contrasts often reveals an underlying interconnectedness. This page directly out of my sketchbook features the contrast between the unlikely pair of a hummingbird and a lion. It got me thinking that I really ought to compose a piece with an unperturbed hummingbird facing a roaring lion.
It was somewhat unconscious, but I thought it interesting that I chose to draw the hummingbird so much larger than the lion and that the lion is in such a passive posture. For some reason, I had a vision of the hum of the hummingbird’s wings calming an otherwise ferocious lion.
“And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.” ~ The Bible
These plants were drawn in a similar fashion to the bugs and spiders posted previously in which I used a 10% cool grey Prisma marker, a fine tip pen, and an opaque white pen. I drew these at the Arboretum which was also the location for one of my prior landscape paintings.