DRAWING ELEPHANTS

(Badly)

My friend Denise emailed me a documentary about The Sheldrick Wildlife Facility, a wilderness camp in Kenya that rescues and cares for orphaned baby elephants. There’s also a very small hippo. The good people who work there raise these young creatures until they are old enough and have had enough experience to be released into the neighboring wild. It’s a process that takes years. I fell in love with everything.

I wanted to draw an elephant, because that’s what happens when I fall in love. I turned the computer off and got my drawing paper and a nice sharpie and made the outline of an elephant in profile. I worked very hard on the trunk, keeping it straight and very close to the elephant’s body. Then I added legs, a tail, and turned the documentary back on.

It turned out I got the proportions all wrong—the placement of the head in relation to body: actually, there wasn’t really anything you could call a head, obviously it had to be where the trunk began, but actually I forgot to make a separate head. The body itself was a fraction of the length it should have been; the legs were far too short to hold any weight at all, let alone that of an elephant. I forgot the tusks, made the tail too skimpy, and chickened out of makiing the magnificent ears, planning to do them justice at some later date. I colored the silhouette black. Black can hide mistakes. Omissions. Ditto dark blue.

My first attempt looked like a tiny bus with feet and a trunk. But despite everything, it made me proud. It felt like essence of elephant, my version of it, anyway, and I loved it.

I have made many more. They walk up and down mountains. They wait in line for ice cream. They are recognizable as elephants because they have trunks, although trunks are rarely still and straight. Trunks show affection. Trunks put food in mouths. Trunks can throw water over bodies on a hot day. Trunks can pick up fallen trees and move them out of the way. You can do pretty much anything with a trunk except light a cigarette and smoke it.

Here is what I’m learning about drawing. If I am attempting something new, something I don’t know how to do (which is everything), the advice I give myself is this: Do not take a drawing class. Do not ask for advice. Do not plan it out. Do not think at all. Pick up your sharpie and start. Anywhere, it doesn’t matter where. This drawing is not for posterity. It is for you. The only hard and fast rule is to please yourself. So please yourself.

That sounds simple, but it’s not a piece of cake. I might be a soft touch, but I am not an easy lay. It doesn’t have to be good, whatever good is, but I never know what will please me until I’m smiling. But hey, if I can make myself happy for even the littlest while, especially nowadays, I’d be a fool not to try.