Updating blogroll

Working on updating my blogroll in the right sidebar.

Blogger has a neat widget that allows you to carry the feed title of the latest post by blogroll blogs...but I had so many it was slowing down loading the blog, and these days I'm using Google Reader to keep up.

I used to have them organized by art, science, writing, scienceblogs.com, my Art Evolved peeps, etc.  Now, I kind of like a giant mash-up.  I find a lot of artists' blogs just use their names for titles, which is kind of interesting.  The mash-up makes it feel a bit more random, hidden treasures of blogs on each click of the list.

(If you don't see your name there and you're pretty sure it was before, don't fret.  I'm not finished typing it up yet.) 

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence. Portfolio
Blog
Print Shop

Glendon Mellow, B.F.A., Honours

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Blog tweaks.

A few more blog tweaks. You'll notice the button bar near the top. Check out the Shop button, there's some new formats in there! (Stickers!)

I've also added reviews of my art with links to some of the projects and supportive comments I've received. Thanks to everyone who allowed me to use their quotes. Nice birthday present to read those again.

Down near the bottom of the posts, there's a little slideshow of available merchandise and prints: just hover over the image to see the price ranges, click to browse.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

The Big News: Strong and Free(lance)

Tentanda Via - The way must be tried.

-York University motto.

I've made a decision. I've given notice to my good, full-time job and I'm going to go professional. Full-time freelance fine artist & illustrator, occasional speaker on the intersection of art and science.

This year, I completed my Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts that I had left in limbo over a decade ago. Michelle is a full-time primary school teacher now, and is encouraging me to take new steps in my career. I really want this. The time is now.

Inspired in part by Brian Switek's "So you want to write a pop-sci book" series on Laelaps and as an offshoot to my Going Pro series on Art Evolved, over the next few months I'll start writing about what it's like freelancing, and what steps I'm taking to aim for success. Of course I won't discuss clients or jobs I'm working on (at least until showing off successfully completed artwork), and other than the occasional post for something new in my reproduction shop, I won't be using this series to jones for jobs.

Since I was 14, I've been working with a steady paycheque. Now, I'll leave the security of my full-time job in late summer or early fall. I want to discuss what I'm doing to be prepared for this big shift. I'll make mistakes, and learn lessons, and I plan to share them in the Strong and (Free)lance series.

With the blessings of my fellow Art Evolved admins, Craig and Peter, I may be posting this series of Going Pro on both blogs.

I have a lot of people to thank for the encouragement and advice while I've been considering this shift. My wife Michelle has been cheering me on, and has incredible confidence in me. I've spoken with image-makers Carl Buell, Jeff Hayes, Eric Orchard, Tanja Sova, Sean Craven, Craig Dylke, Chris Zenga, and Felice Frankel about the decision at various stages, and it's helped a lot. (Jeff, you tipped it over the edge!) A special thanks to Coturnix and Sugarman for the invites to ScienceOnline that made this path clearer. And thanks too, to the many people -bloggers, authors, scientists and art fans - who've commissioned a work or purchased a print from my online store. Each of you have made this a pleasure.

Most of the commissions I've performed over the last 3+ years of blogging here on The Flying Trilobite were unsolicited. I'm proud of how my artwork has resonated with the secular and scientific communities. To turn it into a career, I need to seek opportunities myself, and not wait for them to come to me.

Scared and elated and ready. Bring it.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

New tattoo design gallery at glendonmellow.com

I've replaced the objects gallery on my site with a Tattoo Design Gallery.  There's just the two in there so far, but I hope to add more!

The items in the objects gallery have found homes in drawing and painting.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

New objects gallery on glendonmellow.com

I've begun adding a new gallery to my main site, Glendon Mellow: Art in Awe of Science.

It focuses on the art objects I've made this year, from multiple views.

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

Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Featured on CultureLab

CultureLab: Where books, arts and science collide, one of the blogs by New Scientist magazine has a feature about some guy who paint trilobites incorrectly - get this - with wings.

After my panel talk at the Centre for Inquiry a few weeks ago, science writer Dan Falk and I found a hallway and I answered some questions.

The article is titled: Trilobites: Glendon Mellow's Muse.

Thanks Dan!


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

Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Being an atheist insomniac

Next week on Facebook, the "A" Week begins, asking atheists and freethinkers to display the scarlet "A" on their profiles. There are a lot of people who don't believe in the supernatural out there, and still many who feel somewhat alone in their community.

There are a lot of positives on abandoning superstition and religion in life - how you regard each day as a treasure can be one - but there are also downsides. I want to discuss one aspect of being an atheist that has caused me sleepless nights and how that turned around. With the help of Star Wars.

Recognizing that there is no evidence for an afterlife (and that mainstream religions' claims are flimsy appeals to a sense of comfort) is not comforting. Recognizing, as Richard Dawkins eloquently wrote,

"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?"

This is wonderful, and most days I do feel it. However, many nights I can't escape an existential angst so primal I cannot sleep. I feel silly; I feel like I'm failing; yet I cannot shake the feeling I am one day going to die, and sometimes later no one will ever remember me - there may be no one to remember me. I know I have an ego that drives me to be remembered.

I'm an artist, I seek to create things which will be exalted or at least pique interest beyond my numbered days. The street-artist Banksy once said, "The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it." I don't delude myself into thinking people when spend 20+ hours pouring over trilobites with fanciful wings, but I hope more hours will aggregate looking over those paintings over many years than it took to create them.

Simply: many nights I cannot sleep. I feel anxiety over dying. Over things not finished. Over beauty in the world I've heard of and never seen. Of leaving my wife and family behind. I lay awake, freaked out that one day I won't be here. Sometimes I have to get out of bed and pace a little, or play video games to distract myself.

Having moderate persistent asthma doesn't help. Wheezing, tight-chested, thinking about mortality. It's where this painting comes from.

Asthma Incubus:
Once, I was informed by a (well-meaning, I'm sure) atheist Buddhist transhumanist that my fear of dying was not a very mature response that I would have to come to terms with. It surprised me people could come to terms with it: how to do it so you aren't just ignoring it?

A couple of years ago, when the sleep-loss was becoming a particularly acute problem, I read my way through book after book, hoping for some sort of atheism-based mental anaesthetic to help me sleep. Didn't find it.

Until I re-read one of my favourite Star Wars series. Star Wars came out when I was 3 years old. My lifelong artistic fascination with creating living things that don't exist is hugely influenced by Star Wars and the artists like Ralph McQuarrie (and so many more!) who breathed life into ideas.

I was re-reading the X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston (cover art by the awesome Paul Youll.) The series doesn't focus too much on Jedi and the Force, instead it focuses on the pilots that won the war, and are continuing to fight while dealing with attrition in their unit.

I got to Aaron Allston's first book in the series, Wraith Squadron, one sleepless night. I came to a part where the unit's commander, Wedge Antilles was in the uncomfortable position of writing a letter to a deceased pilot's family about her death.

I read this (p 242):

"I no longer believe that the momentum of a life headed in a worthwhile direction ends when that life does...(the pilot) shot down five enemies, all of whom served evil men. Had she not done so, their actions would have led to further evil, but her actions take their place instead, broadening like a firebreak into the future theirs would have occupied...I will never know how much good surrounding me is a legacy of Jesmin's life. Her future will be invisible to me. But invisible is not the same as nonexistent. I will know that her deeds and accomplishments still move among us, phantoms..."

I feel asleep, pondering this immortality.

I still turn to this passage on occasion when the silly, primitive part of my mind looks at the dark of night and sleep and feels fear. I know some of the comfort comes from it being part of a childhood fable I remember fondly.

But that idea, that whatever actions I take may ripple outward into the future, hopefully for the better gives me comfort enough to sleep. As Dawkins pointed out, I have existed, and I'm lucky to rise from the bed, to do good work and enjoy the universe. Allston's writing points out to me that my existence can never be removed the history of the universe.

*zzzz-zzzzz*

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Star Wars: X-Wing: Wraith Squadron, by Aaron Allston is published by
Bantam Books and may be purchased here.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is published by Bantam books
and may be purchased here.

Flying Trilobite Business Model

I'm looking for advice.

Since beginning The Flying Trilobite 3 years ago, it has been many things to me. A way to reach other people, primarily bloggers, with similar interests. A continuous art studio critique of my work (thanks for over 1700 comments everyone!). A place for my opinions to find safe haven. Until I launched glendonmellow.com last December, it was also my primary place to promote my artwork, in conjunction with my deviantArt gallery and my reproduction shop by RedBubble.

Current business model
If I have had a business model so far as an artist, it has been comprised of two streams:
1) make art --> blog art --> comments --> take new commissions.
2) make art --> blog art --> put in reproduction shop --> sell.

As a business model, it's not unlike what bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have done: put some stuff out there for free, and hope payment comes in through other means.

I've had the immense pleasure of taking commissions, collaborations which have resulted in some of my best work. A number of my images have been published in dead-tree format, 7 times last year, and I only sought out one of those, the rest found me. Ditto with the reproduction of Darwin in the museum.

Now the end of school approaches, I've been discussing with my wife Michelle and some friends about how to do even more freelance work. Since beginning Flying Trilobite, I've enjoyed the art process more than I ever have in my life. Art needs an audience - no, correction, scratch that, the artist needs an audience. And you guys rock.

New business model
I still intend to continue these two streams:
1) make art --> blog art --> comments --> take new commissions.
2) make art --> blog art --> put in reproduction shop --> sell.
And add these:
3) make art --> blog art --> open eBay or Etsy shop --> sell originals.
4) send portfolio --> magazine & comic publishers --> make art.
5) send portfolio --> museums & institutions --> make art.
6) send portfolio --> book publishers --> {edit: skip cycle of rejection & doubt} --> make art.

(Add to this that I have discussed the intersection of Art & Science at 4 different venues - could I be one of those speakers with a microphone protruding from my tie?)

This is where I ask the blogosphere, family and friends and strangers for advice. I allow for anonymous comments, so feel free to be frank and honest if you have an opinion and want to be like Batman. Or be your bold self like Iron Man.

Could I make my weird paintings (I'm not weird, you are) into a bigger success financially?
Are there other streams full-time artists employ to make a living?

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

Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***
For those of you who don't want to be Batman or Iron Man, I'm afraid you're
stuck being Zan & Jayna, the Wonder Twins. "Form of...a puddle!"

Art in Awe of Science at the Centre for Inquiry

Tomorrow, Saturday 6 March, I'll be taking part in a panel discussion at the Centre for Inquiry Ontario at the annual meeting. The theme is the intersection of art and science, and I'll be on the panel with Paula Gardner of the Ontario College of Art & Design and Roshelle Filart of the Ontario Science Centre.

Should be great fun. In the next couple of days, I'll report on the discussion and the CFI gallery show, where I met artist Karyn Wong.

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

Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

I'm a zombie teddy bear

My friend Chris Zenga, who blogs his artwork at The Day After Art did this drawing. Of me.

As a zombie teddy bear.

...

You can check out Chris's blog, and his print shop. He's also on Twitter, and is taking commissions through his Etsy shop.


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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence. Except the bear above. That's by Chris Zenga.
Weren't you paying attention? Zombie bears are going to eat the stuffing out of you.

Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Image-Citation Citation!

As I write this in early 2010, I must state I freakin' love blogs. As an artist-illustrator who blogs original content, one of the things I love most is when bloggers cite the artist, illustrator, graphic designer, photographer or image-maker who created the pictures that adorn their blog posts.

It doesn't happen enough. Too often, images are pasted on by a blogger to help make a point without recognition to those who work hard at creating image content. It's taken for granted that many images are freely used online (whether they are allowed to be or not). Artists' recognition shouldn't be neglected.

Images educate about new concepts, beg to be shared for their cheekiness and insight, and enhance the blogging world. We know this. Time to credit those who take the time to give image-credit where it is due. I hope this meme will spread through the blogosphere.

May I present, The Image-Citation Citation!

Share and award this blog award to bloggers who take the time to cite, backlink and applaud the people who create original images. Giving this award doesn't mean you've read every blog post the author has penned since the phrase "web log" was used: it means you acknowledge those who regularly acknowledge our bloggy artistic treasures and jesters.

Download, right-click & save or request a copy of this image from me in another form or with a blog colour specific background, and I'll see what I can do. Email your award to the intended blogger with an explanation and backlink to here. I'd love it if you'd comment who you've awarded it to and why on this post, and backlink it if you are a recipient announcing your accolade.

To begin, I award the Image-Citation Citation to:

1) Lines and Colors by Charley Parker, for making the citing of image-makers a joy every post.

2)Not Exactly Rocket Science, by Ed Yong, for above average journalistic attention to citations and sources.

3) Infectious Greed by Paul Kedrosky, for taking the time to consistently show his infographic and illustration sources through labels and links.

Who do you award the Image-Citation Citation to?

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Edit, 21 Feb 2010: I've created a new, more compact, easier to understand Image-Citation Citation image for recipients to put on their blog, at the request of the commenters (thanks, peeps!)

Please feel free to forward to those who deserve it, and link back here so we can keep a growing list! The url to link to easily is http://tinyurl.com/imagecite .

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

Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Art Monday: Krismas Classic

(Oil without digital.)

(Oil with digital.)

Merry Krismas and Happy Holidays everyone!

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Interview at Extreme Biology

An interview with yours truly, conducted by Melina of the Extreme Biology blog has gone up. Extreme Biology is a high school biology class blog run by Miss Baker. who teaches in the North Eastern U.S. The students will also be attending the upcoming Science Online 2010 in January, and I hope to shake hands with the interviewer!
I dunno though. Sometimes I wonder if listening to an artist is like listening to one of those Eighties hair-metal bands talk about their music. Hopefully I made more sense.
(Thanks Melina and Miss Baker!)
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

The “that’s right people, I’m an artist, but I do science-y art and it’s cool” badge.

Aww, thanks Jason! (see below)

Welcome "Blogs of Note" readers!

Yesterday, I had the thrill of coming home and finding out The Flying Trilobite had been listed as one of Google Blogger's, Blogs of Note.

Welcome to the new readers!

I love introducing new people to my Art in Awe of Science, and would like to know more about you. So consider this an open thread to say, introduce yourself, and link back to your own blog. Please feel free to be interesting and not spammy. :-)

A quick intro to who I am: My name is Glendon, and I'm a classically trained oil painter living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I paint mainly using a mixture of traditional and digital techniques, and I love science, atheism and the wonder of imagination. All three of which can go hand-in-hand! Mainly, I paint subjects inspired by our pale blue dot's rich evolutionary history. And the occasional comic book character.

My art has been cited on numerous blogs about the intersection between art & science, and I attended ScienceOnline'09 to moderate a discussion session on the subject, and I will be attending the 2010 conference to expand on it, co-hosting with the inimitable Felice Frankel.

You can read more about me at my bio page.

I also sell some reproductions of my art in my online shop, including t-shirts. Last year, I launched a calendar, which I have re-named Collection 1 and is now updated for 2010. I will have a Collection 2 out in the next few weeks.

Some of my top posts in my opinion are:
-The making of Darwin Took Steps.
-My thoughts on Inspiration & Drugs.
-Because of the amount of searches for it, I posted about Flying & Asthma.
-If you follow the label "process", you will find many more "making of" type of posts about how I create my work.
-I'm a member of Art Evolved, a fantastic collection of paleo-artists. Check us out!
-I've created a number of custom blog banners:

I believe in charities, and two I recommend very highly are:
The Beagle Project
Foundation Beyond Belief
Take a look, and see if the promotion of science, wonder and the advancement of people inspires you.

Thanks again for visiting The Flying Trilobite!

-Glendon
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Anniversary 6

Six years ago this evening, I married Michelle.(I drew this for our invitation, based on John Atkinson Grimshaw's Iris, my favourite painting, which we saw on our second date.)Victoria College, University of Toronto.


She is my favourite person.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Published in EARTH Magazine!

In the September 2009 issue of EARTH Magazine, you can find a two-page profile of Art Evolved by Carolyn Gramling.


There is artwork by myself, Zach Miller, and Art Evolved founders Craig Dylke and Peter Bond. There's a nice interview with Craig and Peter as well. That's our headline there on the cover: Paleo-artists get creative.

My Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil III (that makes up the current banner above) gets over a third of page 65 - seeing my own images in publication never gets old. Finding a feature article in the 7-11 in my Toronto neighbourhood is awesome. Being in there with online friends and artists I respect is shiny.

The issue itself is a treat, including the cover article about mass extinctions. Hadn't though about it before, but crinoids like the ones on the right of my banner have actually made through the 5 worst mass extinctions of all time. Fascinating stuff.

Thanks to Peter and Craig for inviting me into this online adventure at Art Evolved, and thanks to Carolyn Gramling for recognizing the next wave in art about our planet's prehistorical fauna.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Contest winner!

Winner of my first contest:

Coturnix!

Bora, you will receive a signed print of Science-Chess Accomodating Religion some time in the next few weeks.

Holy Monkey that was close.

I had to call in a second judge to weigh in accuracy factors and the timing of entries. I've also already, (appropriately, I think) tweeted the winning announcement.

Here are my original ideas, and a breakdown of how Coturnix won the print:
Pieces in the back, left to right:
-Darwin's tree of life drawing
-Wave-particle duality
-Kekule's dream of an ourobouros representing the benzene ring
-Mendel's peas
-Copernican heliocentrism
-Red bishop as religion, transparent, cracked, alone and with a halo, the halo being a symbol that most religions incorporate into their visual iconography
Toppled in the foreground, left to right:
-Stem cells
-Needle representing vaccines

But dude, this was close.

Basically, by mine and my second judge's tally, Scicurious actually had all of the correct answers - but the last after contest closing at noon today. Sorry Sci! I had to draw a line.

The piece representing wave-particle duality was the toughie - some of the answers had me scurrying to look up science concepts or history I was unaware of! Anonymous-Trish had it almost bang-on, but if I am looking at the difference between Coturnix's "radioactivity" answer and Anon-Trish & James' "Curie's theory of radioactive decay and using it for carbon dating", I chose the earlier answer.

Thanks to everyone who played along - this was fun. And I like Bora's suggestion to see this on a t-shirt. And I think I need to send Greg Laden a Mr. Bill made out of plasticine.

Thanks everyone!
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

"Science-Chess Accommodating Religion"...contest!

"I'm thinking scientific accommodation of religion is akin to letting someone take your King's Rook off the board because you're winning."

This painting was originally created due to the above Twitter tweet I made, inspired by the writing of Jerry Coyne, Ophelia Benson, PZ Myers, Mike Haubrich, Stephanie Zvan, Greg Laden, Jason Thibeault, Russell Blackford and Richard Dawkins. This painting is an homage to your writing, and the other atheists out there unafraid to speak up (I am sure I have left many out). Mike liked it enough to add it to his rotating quotes, and that got me thinking about how I would visualize it.

Since I began blogging my art, I have struggled with themes of secularism and atheism without being cartoonish or overly mocking. Science and my surreal riffs are fun and fascinating for me, but atheist painting concepts have been a challenge.

The contest: identify all the pieces. I will give the first person to figure them all out a signed print from my reproduction store. Blog comments here at this Flying Trilobite post only to qualify (not Twitter or Facebook at this time, please, it will be hard to see who was first). A higher quality view of the image can be seen in my Reproduction Shop.

Let's say...in order of left to right, with the two toppled pieces in the foreground following the red piece in sequence? I will be away for my usual Art Monday, so let's leave this contest in its stead.
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Creative Spaces - Closet Creativity

Artist-writer-oaf Sean Craven of Renaissance Oaf and I have talked about how fascinating it is to peek inside another creative person's studio space. To quote Sean, "I'm always fascinated by the workspaces of creative types. The factories of the culture industry, the monastic hives of the culturally isolated, closets and couches as well as studios or arts centers."

Sean has started things off with Ascending the Lavender Staircase his Workstation and Decor by Default. So let's whisk into the wall of my living room.

My baseball-playing, special education teaching, gorgeous wife Michelle and I live in an ancient 3 story apartment just west of downtown where Littles Italy, Portugual and Brazil meet. It's a two-bedroom, and because our nephew stays over once a week, a few years ago we gave him the second bedroom as his own. Michelle's office moved to the living room. I offered to take one of our two huge living room closets. I didn't want the little guy messing with my painty chemicals.

So let's pull one book out on the shelf and whisk into the wall of my living room. My studio is a closet, painted to look like part of the wall. I don't have a lot of photos of the outside of the studio. Here's one from a couple of year's back. It's behind my holiday smile. Weird colours in that photo. The walls are actually more neutral blue-green.

This is just inside. You can see I have pieces of the Of Two Minds and Meming of Life banners tacked to the door. I also sometimes pour stand oil, a thick-as-honey heated linseed oil on top of my finished paintings, like the diatom fairy painting in the foreground. Gives it a mottled, glossy surface.

The view above my card table/drawing surface. Some pieces from the Migrations banner, and a large drawing about my asthma and lungs in general I did years ago.
Almost every surface of the studio is crammed with my images. I find it helps me to recall brushtrokes or colours I may presently be having trouble with. One of my only non-mybigego images is an article entitled "Evolution, and nothing more" by Jerry Coyne, published in Canada's National Post on Friday 2nd of December, 2005. It was a one page rebuttal to the previous day's insipid "intelligent design" article. It was the first time I had ever read Jerry Coyne, and it electrified me. I was drawing and talking about it like crazy. So now it's plaque-mounted and been in my studio space ever since.
Paintings, collapsible easel, buncha portfolios. Naked humans with mitochondria and trilobites.
They say the trick to taking pictures of oil paints is to use 2 bright bulbs at 45 degree angles or less and very distant from the painting. I paint in a closet. Meh.
My original painting-drawing for the current blog banner actually just moves awkwardly around the studio (below on my paint-box). The drawing is lined up on a piece of bristol that I carelessly got squidges of paint on. I really need to get that framed properly. Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle is under glass in a hinged 12x12 scrapbooking frame.

The wooden flying trilobite necklace Tanja Sova made and gave me is hanging below. Our home has books in almost every room. Like Bond, I like to have some inspiration and reference close at hand. The bright blue book below the awesome Art S. Buck mannequins and Precambrian toys is my mother's original nursing anatomy book. Books on concept art, atheism, science and art techniques all sit hand in hand on there. And Twisted Toyfare Theatre tends to creep in sometimes.
Paint! I use such thin layers when I paint, many of those tubes are from when I originally worked on my undergrad 12 years ago. I think I have only replaced the lamp black, titanium white and naples yellow. More storage portfolios, one with another diatom fairy from the period when all my people had green skin.
If studio spaces are like a room into the mind of the artist, mine is fit to burst. Or collapse inward and make a crushing singularity.
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This trip into Creative Spaces wouldn't be half as fun if it wasn't continued by others. Some Creative Spaces I'd love to see: Almost Diamonds, eTrilobite, The Day After, Heather Ward Wildlife Art, Claudia Massie and State of the Art. If you participate, feel free to use Sean's excellent logo above! We plan on collecting all the links in a post on Art Evolved.
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Other Creative Spaces so far:
*Renaissance Oaf, Parts one, two, three.
*Bond's Blog

- - - - - - - - Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence. Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***