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ursulav — Sloth Dancer
Published: 2007-04-26 19:51:13 +0000 UTC; Views: 28783; Favourites: 564; Downloads: 566
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Description
Once upon a time there was a sloth who wanted very badly to be a belly dancer.People said "It's not that a sloth can't be a dancer--
we live in an enlightened age,
a sloth can do whatever she wants--
but still--perhaps a stately waltz or minuet?
Sloths are not quick.
That's just the way it is."
But the sloth's one desire was to be a belly dancer, and so she was,
dancing to the tambour and the wailing flute.
She was very slow. It took all night.
Most people left.
But a few people stayed, and thought
that it was worth the wait.
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I haven't painted a straightforward silly Weird Animal Pin-Up in a dog's age, so I figured what the hell. Three-toed sloths are under-represented. Particularly as belly dancers, damnit.
Mixed media, 10 x 15 or thereabouts. Original is for sale, prints available for $10 plus shipping--send a note or visit [link] for details.
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Comments: 149
It's lovely, and has such a wonderful story. I think she would be a lovely dancer, slow can make it even more beautiful and exotic.
I wish this dear sloth the best of luck
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This deserves to be a DD!
I love the attention to detail you put into this. I also really like your artists comments.
Simply breathtaking!
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my friend kara the sloth lover sez "wicked cool sloth story, thanks for sharing"
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you have to be one of my favorite artist ever. you really are something, what country are you in.
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This is real cool. I like how you said that she basically danced in slow motion. She IS a sloth.
I also like how the background looks like a ginormous floating kickball.
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I can picture her dancing!
And that's something I never would have imagined.
So, thank you.
It's great.
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its really cute.
and theres a random dodgeball in the background.lol.
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That's hilarious! How'd you come up with that??? I love it!!!
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This piece, and its backstory, are beautiful and poetic. Lovely.
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This piece is so lovely, it's got to be one of my favs <3
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I'm slowly going through your amazing gallery and so far, this one made me chuckle the most. Fantabalous!
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I'm no fan of Anthro, but surely am a fan of sloths, and if someday I get the mood, I'll draw The Five Animal Forms(a sloth included)... And the tiny story going with it is cute, too.
Very nice. Ever thought of making prints of these?
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This is more in response to this statement then your art directly (which is very good):
'
we live in an enlightened age,
a sloth can do whatever she wants--
but still--perhaps a stately waltz or minuet?
Sloths are not quick.
That's just the way it is."'
By "People", I can't help but think of the Tolstoyin Philosopher in the following exerpt.
"I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," said the stranger,
in a voice at once eager and deprecating.
The voice was too polite for good manners. It was incongruous
with the eccentric spectacle of the duellists which ought to have
startled a sane and free man. It was also incongruous with the full
and healthy, though rather loose physique of the man who spoke.
At the first glance he looked a fine animal, with curling
gold beard and hair, and blue eyes, unusually bright.
It was only at the second glance that the mind felt a sudden
and perhaps unmeaning irritation at the way in which the gold
beard retreated backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which
the finely shaped nose went forward as if smelling its way.
And it was only, perhaps, at the hundredth glance that the bright
blue eyes, which normally before and after the instant seemed brilliant
with intelligence, seemed as it were to be brilliant with idiocy.
He was a heavy, healthy-looking man, who looked all the larger
because of the loose, light coloured clothes that he wore,
and that had in their extreme lightness and looseness, almost a touch
of the tropics. But a closer examination of his attire would
have shown that even in the tropics it would have been unique;
but it was all woven according to some hygienic texture which no
human being had ever heard of before, and which was absolutely
necessary even for a day's health. He wore a huge broad-brimmed hat,
equally hygienic, very much at the back of his head, and his voice
coming out of so heavy and hearty a type of man was, as I have said,
startlingly shrill and deferential.
"I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," he said.
"Now, I wonder if you are in some little difficulty which, after all,
we could settle very comfortably together? Now, you don't mind
my saying this, do you?"
The face of both combatants remained somewhat solid under this appeal.
But the stranger, probably taking their silence for a gathering shame,
continued with a kind of gaiety:
"So you are the young men I have read about in the papers.
Well, of course, when one is young, one is rather romantic.
Do you know what I always say to young people?"
A blank silence followed this gay inquiry. Then Turnbull said
in a colourless voice:
"As I was forty-seven last birthday, I probably came into the world
too soon for the experience."
"Very good, very good," said the friendly person. "Dry Scotch humour.
Dry Scotch humour. Well now. I understand that you two people want
to fight a duel. I suppose you aren't much up in the modern world.
We've quite outgrown duelling, you know. In fact, Tolstoy tells
us that we shall soon outgrow war, which he says is simply a duel
between nations. A duel between nations. But there is no doubt
about our having outgrown duelling."
Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger
stood beaming for a moment and then resumed:
"Now, they tell me in the newspapers that you are really wanting
to fight about something connected with Roman Catholicism.
Now, do you know what I always say to Roman Catholics?"
"No," said Turnbull, heavily. "Do _they_?" It seemed
to be a characteristic of the hearty, hygienic gentleman that
he always forgot the speech he had made the moment before.
Without enlarging further on the fixed form of his appeal to
the Church of Rome, he laughed cordially at Turnbull's answer;
then his wandering blue eyes caught the sunlight on the swords,
and he assumed a good-humoured gravity.
"But you know this is a serious matter," he said, eyeing Turnbull
and MacIan, as if they had just been keeping the table in a roar
with their frivolities. "I am sure that if I appealed to your higher
natures...your higher natures. Every man has a higher nature
and a lower nature. Now, let us put the matter very plainly,
and without any romantic nonsense about honour or anything of that sort.
Is not bloodshed a great sin?"
"No," said MacIan, speaking for the first time.
"Well, really, really!" said the peacemaker.
"Murder is a sin," said the immovable Highlander. "There is no
sin of bloodshed."
"Well, we won't quarrel about a word," said the other, pleasantly.
"Why on earth not?" said MacIan, with a sudden asperity.
"Why shouldn't we quarrel about a word? What is the good
of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over?
Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any
difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead
of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're
not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about?
Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears?
The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words,
because they are the only things worth fighting about.
I say that murder is a sin, and bloodshed is not, and that there
is as much difference between those words as there is between
the word 'yes' and the word 'no'; or rather more difference,
for 'yes' and 'no', at least, belong to the same category.
Murder is a spiritual incident. Bloodshed is a physical incident.
A surgeon commits bloodshed.
"Ah, you're a casuist!" said the large man, wagging his head.
"Now, do you know what I always say to casuists...?"
MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open laughter.
The peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed, but continued
in unabated enjoyment.
"Well, well," he said, "let us get back to the point.
Now Tolstoy has shown that force is no remedy; so you see
the position in which I am placed. I am doing my best
to stop what I'm sure you won't mind my calling this really
useless violence, this really quite wrong violence of yours.
But it's against my principles to call in the police against you,
because the police are still on a lower moral plane, so to speak,
because, in short, the police undoubtedly sometimes employ force.
Tolstoy has shown that violence merely breeds violence in the person
towards whom it is used, whereas Love, on the other hand, breeds Love.
So you see how I am placed. I am reduced to use Love in order
to stop you. I am obliged to use Love."
He gave to the word an indescribable sound of something hard and heavy,
as if he were saying "boots". Turnbull suddenly gripped his sword
and said, shortly, "I see how you are placed quite well, sir.
You will not call the police. Mr. MacIan, shall we engage?"
MacIan plucked his sword out of the grass.
"I must and will stop this shocking crime," cried the Tolstoian,
crimson in the face. "It is against all modern ideas.
It is against the principle of love. How you, sir, who pretend
to be a Christian..."
MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip.
"Sir," he said, "talk about the principle of love as much as you like.
You seem to me colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe
that you may at some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or a child.
When you were a baby, I suppose you loved your mother.
Talk about love, then, till the world is sick of the word.
But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't you dare to say one word,
white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far as you are concerned,
a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent upon it,
as you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made
men slay and torture each other; and you will never know why.
It is a thing that has made men do evil that good might come;
and you will never understand the evil, let alone the good.
Christianity is a thing that could only make you vomit, till you are
other than you are. I would not justify it to you even if I could.
Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull does, who is a man.
It is a monstrous thing, for which men die. And if you will stand
here and talk about love for another ten minutes it is very probable
that you will see a man die for it."
And he fell on guard. Turnbull was busy settling something loose
in his elaborate hilt, and the pause was broken by the stranger.
"Suppose I call the police?" he said, with a heated face.
"And deny your most sacred dogma," said MacIan.
"Dogma!" cried the man, in a sort of dismay. "Oh, we have
no _dogmas_, you know!"
There was another silence, and he said again, airily:
"You know, I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches
about no moral principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read
_The Quintessence of Ibsenism_? Of course he went very wrong
over the war."
Turnbull, with a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose
piece of the pommel with string. With the string in his teeth,
he said, "Oh, make up your damned mind and clear out!"
"It's a serious thing," said the philosopher, shaking his head.
"I must be alone and consider which is the higher point of view.
I rather feel that in a case so extreme as this..." and he went
slowly away. As he disappeared among the trees, they heard him
murmuring in a sing-song voice, "New occasions teach new duties,"
out of a poem by James Russell Lowell.
From "The Ball And The Cross", By GK Chesterton
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Very nice piece. I agree, sloths are totally under-represented in the arts. Perhaps a fund is needed...
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Too cute for words. ^^ Very nice coloring style and I love the back story. Bellydancing for the win!
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nice ^-^ sloths are kinda creepy looking, except when they're babies
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It had never occurred to me that a three-toed sloth could dance, but really, she looks rather good at it.
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Very adorable 
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XD Great idea. sloths kind of freak me out, but they're still really cool, and this is..even..more cool. Nice back story. ^^
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Love the belly dancing sloth! She could use a navel jewel, though!
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You're so creative and goofy. But that's just another reason why I love watching your art ^__^
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We sloths find this to be HAWT! Oh my yes.
MOAR PLZ!
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The mere idea of a sloth belly dancer is enough to make my day. On top of that, I love her face.
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This is my favorite thing about your art--you (beautifully) represent the under-represented.
I mean, who else in the WORLD comes up with sloth belly dancers? You're amazing!
...I think I'd stay and watch her.
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I drew a little sketch of Digger for you, I'm highly embarassed by it, but I think she's funny.
This is very awesome... I love the long claws and texture
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There is no limit to your imagination. Amazing. <3
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I have to admit, sloths do seem to have the bellies for the task
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SO much cute! So much wonderful imagination! So much love... 
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That's amazing. A lot is said in that little picture of yours. Amazing, great job! ^^
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Follow your dream,
No matter how crazy or pointless it may seem.
And like the purple-robed sloth under the pinkish moon,
Yours too will come true but maybe not soon!
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i love the sloth, but the pink ball behind her kinda has the texture of a kickball
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