Getting out there

In my last post, I included the making of a new painting, called Darwin Took Steps. I had offered to share this artwork with the editors of The Eloquent Atheist, in part to reach a broader audience than The Flying Trilobite's alone.

The subject matter was intended to be a part of Darwin Day, and so I registered at the organizers' site along with the other participants. It's always fun to see your name on the same list as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.

I tried to promote the piece on Facebook, changed my profile picture to one of the sketches, and made comments on the walls of a few groups, pointing the way to The Eloquent Atheist to aid in traffic there. Hopefully they'll have me back again some time.

By the end of the day on February twelfth, my Darwin painting had been re-posted on two other websites - in Spain! It was done without my direct permission, but it was done respecting the Creative Commons licence: in this case, it was cited as being a painting by me, it was not altered, and no one was profiting by it. I was and still am pretty excited!

On first site, the painting was posted by one of the DeviantArt contributors I have corresponded with, who goes by the name of Koolasuchus. In case you're not familiar with the "suchus" part, it is Latin for crocodile, and Koolasuchus often includes drawings of these in their DeviantArt gallery.

With the second site, It turns out that Koolasuchus also is a regular contributor to an aggregate site, also in Spanish, called Evolucionarios. The site looks great. Unfortunately the only other language I am fluent in is ASL, with a smattering of French from my Canadian upbringing.

So, Darwin Took Steps did what I set out for it to do; it put me out there. My thanks to all those parties who liked the piece, commented, re-posted it or checked it out! Next year is the two hundredth anniversary of Darwin's birth, so I'll have to start cooking up something grand to go alongside this year's painting.

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If you've read this far in such a self-indulgent post, allow me to tease you with another piece I am working on that should be up soon. Normally, I feel it is bad form to mention a piece of art for a contract until it is completed and approved. However, since Shelley Batts' confirmed it over at A Blog Around the Clock already, I figure it's cool.


I am almost finished a piece for Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle and Steve Higgins of Omnibrain. These two neuroscience students and ScienceBloggers have teamed up to create a new blog, to be called Of Two Minds, and launching March 1st. I will be doing one of the rotating banners again, and I'm pretty psyched.

It's a good start to 2008; two more painting contacts for others. And March 7th will be my one year blogiversary, so you know I'm cooking up a special illustration to mark the day that the flying trilobite army burst onto the scene!