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What a marvellous cat ! I love the colors and he is so cute ;)

I haven't heard of this book, but it sounds wonderful. Even though poem in your pocket day is past, I'm going to print out the baby chick origami, my four year old will love it.

Beautiful!

Beautiful colors. And wildflowers!

Awesome work

This is lovely! So happy!

Such a sweet scene.

Beautiful! I love the goat and love the city in the background!

thank you !
I think I should have extended a bit so the got's mouth doesn't seem cut off. I'll work on it some more. I like urban bee hives too, maybe I'm getting used to the country life...

Typically it can take a long time property developers in paphos car hire would sell the idea
to investors to buy” off plan”.

Sir, I marvel at your memories.

What a great story, and I LOVE that second sketch, especially. It's gorgeous in its simplicity.

If you were so inclined this story, expanded somewhat, would make a nice children's book. As if you don't have enough ideas and things to do already! :^)

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James hello! This is Iliya from the Repin Academy, I am not sure if you remember me but I commented on your blog a while ago when you had a post on academic drawing. I didn't know how else to contact you. I wanted to know if you could suggest some painters/paintings with candle light and candle lit figures outside of the real obvious examples. I'm pretty sure that you can come up with more than I can when it comes to 19th century work as well as 20th century illustration.

Beautiful simple drawing, James. As a fellow illustrator and watercolor painter, I am curious. How were you able to keep the paper wet without freezing (assuming it was still a little cold)? What would you recommend to do for painting on days like that?

Love the hair under the chin of the second painting - and the eyelash. It's just right!

Thanks, Marta. Yes, they've still got their winter fur and look pretty scraggly.

Alex, it was well above freezing. I don't do much watercolor painting when it's colder than freezing. I've heard of people using vodka for water, but I would just switch to oil.

Iliya, I can't think of anyone except the obvious ones, like de la Tour and N.C. Wyeth. I'll think about it and report back here if I find any good ones.

Thanks, Tom. There's always a story going on at the farm, some little drama that we couldn't have anticipated. Glad you enjoy them, and I really appreciate your frequent and kind comments.

Really loved this drama described of Canada geese landing away on some sort of "contaminated runway" ;and how in the end you achieved to sketch that witnessing horse, looking at it all...

Oh, I do love that second sketch very much. It captures so much 'horseyness' for lack of a better word.

What a delightful story. Thanks. It brightened my night.

I'm tellin' ya James, do a watercolor book next and be sure to include all these great anecdotes.
Just what I've seen here on the blog you have enough.
I especially love those little postage stamp size ones you did sittin' in the train station.
... oh yeah and include some of Janettes too, like the ones you each did of the house, and the mower I think it was? Yeah, thats it! two Gurney's for the price of one!

OK it's settled, where do I stand in line?

A lovely story to go with lovely paintings. They both complement each other so well!

I often say that art is what makes us human - what separates us from machine and animal....I guess now I must rethink my declaration! This is fascinating!

I have been arguing that art isn't uniquely human in my arts appreciation class, but they equate any animal painting as a Pavlov's Dog experiment.

Lucas, yes, the debate about animal art as a conditioned behavior often centers around the elephants in Thailand who are trained to paint as a performance for tourists. But Morris's chimp studies seem to prove that the motivation is exactly the reverse of classical conditioning. Congo picked up the pencil on his own and drew his first line without any suggestion, and once he got into it, treats or rewards actually had the reverse effect.

Kelleewynne, I know what you mean. I have had to rewire my brain as a result of this, too. Botstein seems to exclude children's painting as art-making, and I really disagree with him there.

One animal activity that seems to be on the boundary line between "play" and "art" is the way dolphins create bubble rings. Is it a form of dance? Does it have an aesthetic component? Is it art? Or just goofing around? See for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMCf7SNUb-Q

Guess Morris' experiments prove that art "just flows out of us". No advanced cognition or training is necessary. All those rules and principles just get in the way of "true expression" anyway. That didn't sound too snarkey, did it?

Simone, I totally sympathize with your point. In this post, I'm not ranking what's "true" or "pure" or "good art." I'm just challenging the claim that art-making is uniquely human. Modernists, notably Picasso, have suggested that in their adult work they were trying to capture the spirit of children's art, or even animal "fauvist" art. For me, Picasso's wish is valid only for emulating a child's enthusiastic and pure hearted zeal for the doing of it, but not for the outward form of the art, which seems to me like a pointless and impossible goal. As a child, I remember being hungry to learn how to draw accurately, so that my art looked real. I didn't want praise from adults; I wanted practical guidance.

In every video I have seen, even though a palette of various colors is set before the animal, they have to be prompted by humans to make variations in color. Doesn't that interference in the process greatly influence our perception that it is "art"?

How do you know the animal isn't simply enjoying the exercising of its motor skills (which in and of itself could explain the tendency to shapes and patterns), especially in a situation where it is removed from its normal and natural habitat? The all important aesthetic factor could be nonexistent

There really seems to be no attempt whatsoever at critical analysis here.

Etc, those are reasonable objections. Are the chimps really doing art spontaneously; is the activity really self-reinforcing; and are there any discernable formal principles at work— or is it just random movement? Morris's book addresses those points pretty thoroughly. His "six biological principles" (which I paraphrased as best I could in the post) are sort of his broad conclusions, but one would have to read the whole book to evaluate his experimental parameters and critical analysis.

I guess when someone looks at a painting and says "a chimp could paint better than that" They might be right.

"...obsessed with the experience, favoring it over eating or sex"

"was repeatedly clear that he had a very distinct concept of when a drawing or painting was finished"

Well, the Chimps got a lead on me with those!

what a coincidence! I was talking about Desmond Morris last week. One of the most instrumental books I read when I was growing up (that my dad took from him when he did his Master's in Bradford) was "ManWatching". I LOVE that book and have read it cover to cover several times in my life! Thank you for this post! :) Oh, and Happy Pi day!

If we lower the bar on the definition of art far enough, as has been the case in the past century or so, then it should come as no surprise that chimps and elephants can make art according to that definition. Congo's paintings are as good or better than any by Cy Twombly I've ever seen. Also, human beings are mammals, and it should not be too surprising that other mammals of high intelligence are receptive to using brush and paints much the same way we do. On the other hand, I agree with Simone's suggestion that art is not just the innate urge towards creativity, but something much larger.

Craig, good point. So much effort has been put into "de-defining" art that trying to define it nowadays is practically impossible. But "art" is such a nice, short, punchy word that I would hate to see it rendered meaningless. And what about the word "artist"? It has been co-opted by musicians. Let's take it back, folks!

Seriously, although no definition is perfect, the one I keep coming back to is Tolstoy's, which goes something like this: "Art is an activity consisting in this: that one person consciously, by means of certain external signs, transmits to others feelings he has experienced, and by means of the artwork, that other people are infected by those feelings and also experience them.”

James great post I'm currently collaberating with a group of chimps that live in sanctuary in Florida on some paintings and a gallery show. I made a quick film about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMReyxxgq2s

Nathaniel, fascinating video, and what an amazing collaboration. Have you been able to watch the chimpanzees doing their art, or have they watched you? I have always wondered what they see when they look at a human-created representational picture, or perhaps better yet, what might come from an interaction with a human artist whom they can watch painting representationally.

Thanks so much James! I have only seen these chimps painting on film but the same week the show opens I will be headed down to Florida to meet them.

Nathaniel, awesome. Keep me posted about the experience.

Great!