Stroke of Genius
Minnow's newest painting "Bliss"
So yesterday you hopefully read about how there are now TWO painting ponies at PonyPaintings.com. I briefly mentioned how I used Minnow as “teacher” to show the other ponies how it was done – and today I’d like to go into that a little further.
When I started painting with Minnow on Sunday I began thinking about the different strokes that he does. Sometimes he makes up and down marks, sometimes he swirls the brush around, sometimes he jabs at the canvas, and occasionally he misses the canvas all together and “air” paints. So I started wondering what made him decide which stroke to do. Why did he choose to jab the canvas this time and not the next time? Did he actually know he was making something? The answer is actually much simpler than that (I know my horse is smart – but sometimes I probably give him way too much credit). The real answer is that I was telling him what type of marks to make – although I didn’t even know it.
New Mini Paintings by Minnow
When I paint with Minnow I no longer use the clicker, I instead just occasionally give him a bite of grain to keep him interested and sometimes a “Good Boy” or a pat. In my mind I’m just giving him a treat at random – for continuing to paint, and typically I’ll chose a time that he really made a nice mark on the canvas and then handed the brush back to me. But this isn’t why Minnow thought he was getting food.
After about a 1/2 hour of really studying how he was painting I realized that his marks are being influenced by when I give him a reward. If I gave him a treat when he did an up and down stroke then the next time he does a stroke he will do another up and down mark. Seeing that I didn’t reward him that time he tries another stroke, and then another until I finally produce a treat for him. Then the next stoke will be again a repeat of the one that produced the food. And so on the process goes. So basically without even knowing it I was directing Minnow as to what strokes I wanted him to make.
Chincoteague Minnow
Of course the next thing I did was experiment with him. I decided to only give him food when he made a really vigorous mark on the canvas. He also got a “Good Boy” as Minnow recognizes this word in almost the same way he does a click – because I use it a lot. If I give a really exuberant “Good Boy” with a hug and a pat he knows he did exceptionally well. Below you can watch the video of me working with Minnow on only “elaborate” brush strokes. As you can see he tries to just do the “bare minimum” sometimes – but I don’t reward him and wait for a bigger stroke.
I was impressed at the fact that Minnow is constantly trying to figure out what produces the food – perhaps this is why he would paint for hours if I let him. I’m going to continue to play with this concept and see if I can get him to make swirls with the brush or zig zags or something really interesting. Maybe I could even get him to paint something specific. Ever see the elephants that do that? I’m not sure if I could ever teach Minnow to paint something “specific” but that certainly would be amazing.
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
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You are stumbling onto some equine psychology there. Very interesting!!
I wonder if you can test whether he can see colours this way, maybe asking him to choose a color etc?
I have asked him to choose colors – by offering him a selection of paint tubes and he is able to grab the ones he wants. But I haven’t constantly done it with the same colors…seeing if he always grabs the same one or not. I might have to give it a try.
Minnow is an interesting study because sometimes I swear he learns by watching (I guess you could say that about Blitz too since he learned to paint mostly by watching Minnow). Several times I have showed Minnow how I wanted something done and then he just did it. I taught him to “shovel” the ground with a plastic shovel by showing how to do it, handing him the shovel, and then he just did it.
I guess it would probably take a lot more testing to see if he can actually learn simply by watching me do it first. Might be fun to play around with.
I think it could be interesting to try and put different types of brush strokes on cue. It would be interesting to see if a horse could learn to distinguish this and how many different types of stokes you could teach them. However, I wonder how much it would impact the horse’s style/creativity if too much was put under cue.
I think finger painting (err, hoof painting) could also potentially be pretty cool. (Although maybe a bit messier as well!)
cheers,
Mary H.
I did see Sheryl Crow’s trick horse “hoof paint” onto a t-shirt on tv once. She had him trained at the Red Horse Ranch (Imagine-A-Horse) and the Animal Planet did a special on it.
So they had the horse making a t-shirt (which they had attached to a pedestal) and the horse was jumping onto the pedestal with paint on his hooves.
Did seem a little messy and I wasn’t sure how (or if) they kept the dirt off of it.
That is great! Looks like a lot of fun. I’m curious now how you taught it, so I’ll be digging through your archives. 🙂
You should try the “101 Things to Do with a Box” game with Minnow — only in your case, it’d be “101 Things to Do with a Paintbrush.” It’s a creativity game Karen Pryor used to play with the dolphins, and now many c licker trainers play with their dogs. Basically, you only reinforce new behaviors. If it’s different than something the animal has previously offered, you c/t. If not, you wait and see what he offers ’til it’s new and different. Very fun!
ooh I like that idea! I might just have to try that. I have to admit I’m very bad about reading books on clicker training. I am much more of a hands on/visual learner and sadly I only own one clicker training book that I have yet to finish in the year I have owned it! But I might have to look into this game further!