Amusing myself

On Sunday, I lost my Staedtler 0.9mm Mechanical Pencil, which was loaded with Pentel HB drawing lead. This was particularly annoying since it was just a few weeks after I’d dropped my cartridge eraser.

That left me drawing in church with a ball-point pen. That meant no revisions, which in turn meant I couldn’t take my drawing too seriously.

In Genesis 2:19-20, Adam names “the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.” Animals in the Garden of Eden have been a popular subject for genre painters since the Renaissance. These paintings generally show a vast, encyclopedic gathering of wildlife. They’re interesting because they show us the limits of zoological knowledge at different times. They also tell us something about the preoccupations of the artists and their cultures.

As PQ talked, I sketched some animals I might throw into the Garden of Eden, including a wobbly moose, an alligator, a chimp, some sheep and a rooster. Meh, I thought, this has all been done. Instead, what about a wooly mammoth, a dinosaur or a dodo-bird?

We know what dodo-birds look like, because they’ve ‘only’ been extinct for almost 400 years. Woolly mammoths began to diverge about 800,000 years ago in Siberia, and have been extinct for 4000 years. However, we have frozen carcasses from both Russia and North America, lots of fossil material and even prehistoric cave paintings to guide us.

When I started to paint, I had to look up the details of what woolly mammoths really looked like. They (like so many other mammals) had five toes on each foot, although only their front feet had an equal number of visible toenails. They walked on their tippy-toes, which must have been hard considering their size. Although their closest living relative is the Asian elephant, mammoths didn’t have elegant elephant ears. In fact, their ears look kind of like ours. Overall, they were ungainly and a bit ugly.

Biblical literalists are likely to tell me my painting is cobnuts; the earth is only 10,000 years old. Scientific literalists will counter that modern homo sapiens only emerged around 300,000 years ago, so weren’t around when woolly mammoths were created. (Hey, I’ve read the Bible and I met Richard Leakey when I was a child.)

God’s timing is not our timing so who’s to say that God’s days are the same length as ours? The Bible is equally prophecy, history and poetry. Its creation story has more in common with science than either side will admit.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” God asked Job. “Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!”

That’s poetry (with a healthy dollop of sarcasm thrown in). Like any art, it doesn’t need to settle arguments about theology or paleontology or anything else. We draw, we paint and we tell stories because imagination is the greatest gift mankind has been given.

Is this a great painting? Absolutely not. But before we can create anything with staying power , we need to learn to relax and have a little fun.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

• Advanced Plein Air Painting | Rockport, ME, July 13-17, 2026
• Sea & Sky | Acadia National Park, ME, August 2–7, 2026
• Find your Authentic Voice in Plein Air | Berkshires, MA, August 10-14, 2026
• New! Color Clinic 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 3-4, 2026
• New! Composition Week 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 5-9, 2026

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

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