Tuesday, February 17, 2009

I'm not sure what that is

I am not a great artist. I have very basic drawing ability, no talent for painting, and a pretty poor track record with sculpture. Even my photography, to be honest, is usually not terribly good. Given that, though, I feel totally comfortable in saying that I have no idea what kind of animal this is or is supposed to be:

tiger legs

It's like an animal drawn by someone who has never seen an actual animal.

"Tiger? Well, it has legs. And a tail. And it's sort of orangey, with black stripes."

"Like this?"

"Uh.... no."

I saw this mural behind Panera. It's a very long, but badly aged, mural along an alleyway:

dirty mural

It seems to depict an ocean, then a jungle, both possibly in a Disney movie, based on the animals present:

disney-esque bear

The bear is clearly in water, surrounded by frogs. Further down we come to a pelican:

pelican

I suppose it could also be a swimming crane, but I'm sticking with pelican. Just after that, though, is when the animals and scenery start getting weird. The sea slopes downward (against the laws of physics) to become the land, and some sort of animal lives in both zones:

walrus?

Obviously that's a... walrus? Sea lion? Earless, tailless horse whose front limbs have been replaced with croquet mallets? The questions continue as we move on from the gray animal to the one I started with, the tangle of limbs. Anteater? Giraffe? Whatever he is, he's not alone:

strange panda

He has that... panda?... to keep him company, and if they ever get bored they have the panda's arms to play hockey with.

The whole thing gets even weirder when you move away from the panda and back into the land of Disney:

tigger and rabbit

They must have had a pattern or stencil for this and for the bear, so what happened in between? Acid trip? Maybe some sort of environmental accident? Either way, they should take a cue from the neighboring wall and keep things simple:

political commentary

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