Friday 29 June 2012

Beetle Week Day 4: Animated Painting of Trachys

Welcome to Day 4 of Beetle Week here on The Flying Trilobite!

Earlier this year I was commissioned by entomologist and insect photographer Morgan Jackson of Biodiversity in Focus to contribute to a soon-to-be-published, honest-to-gosh dead-tree book about jewel beetles here in Ontario, Canada. The result?  My first series of scientific illustrations, instead of the off-kilter, surreal science paintings I'm known for.

Today:  Animated Painting of Trachys

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No secret: my favourite beetle was the one I saved for last. From it's round teardrop shape to it's brilliant shiny elytra, I love Trachys.

Trachys © Glendon Mellow. Love this guy.


Here's the second part of the sped-up but lengthy video I shot chronicling almost the entire painting of Trachys, done with ArtRage Studio Pro. For more about using ArtRage for scientific illustration, see Day 2 of Beetle Week. You can see all three parts in five minute chunks on my YouTube channel.



I also designed a greeting card featuring this beauty, with a Haldane reference:


Card, print & posters available in my store!  Click the image to be magically whisked away!


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One more day to go for Beetle Week!


Day 1: The Challenge of Scientific Illustration
Day 2: Painting Bugs with ArtRage Studio Pro
Day 3: Being a Freelancing Dad
Day 4: Animated Painting of Trachys
Day 5: The Exhibit 

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.

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2 comments:

Daniel said...

Love. It! And I'm stoked you're recording some of your ArtRage stuff. Sometimes I waste hours just watching artrage timelapses on YouTube.

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks Daniel! I wasn't sure how interesting it would be. I tried to include some Creative Commons music but this original playback at high resolution crashed my computer when I had the sound playing too.

So just say "nn-tss, nn-tss" over and over while you watch it.

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Posts over 14 days old have their comments held in moderation - I've been getting an unusual amount of spam for a guy who paints trilobites. I'll release it lickety-split though.

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