Business Card - decisions, decisions...

I need some help. I haven't updated my business card since starting this blog and taking my artwork online last March. I am openly fishing for comments about the two designs I have cobbled together with the help of my trilobite army.

Criticisms, derisive laughter, suggestions to tweak or change, all comments are welcome. But whatever you say, at least make it funny. Scratch that - too much pressure. I am not really a designer, more of an illustrator. I am happy with both of these cards, indeed I am even leaning toward one more than the other. Can you guess?

Real printable sizes are 3.5"x2". I will likely print them on Fredrix canvas paper or Fabriano Pittura paper. The former has a canvas texture, the latter is used with oil and acrylic, but has a soft press watercolour texture, not quite as rough as a cold press. Here they are:

The Flying Trilobite Business Card concept #1 (links go to my DeviantArt gallery.)

This one has the wing, has a design of the elrathia kingii trilobite tattoo I drew that I plan on getting this spring. I usually draw the wing either with a damselfly/dragonfly concept if the trilobite is alive, or with bat wings if fossilized because mammals are so much cooler than wussy modern dragonflies. In both designs I have not included my phone number, since the email would be easy enough to use to get a contract started.

The Flying Trilobite Business Card concept #2

This one doesn't have the Mythical Flying Trilobite wings, and instead has a trilobite fossil being chucked along Galileo's concept of equations for falling bodies. As the hapless 550 million year old arthropod reaches its apex, it will continue moving forward at the same rate while accelerating downward until it reaches terminal velocity and we've lost a precious artifact. Don't worry, the bottom of the business card is padded, and it's a stunt fossil. I referenced some nice diagrams by Yuta Aoki and drew my own and tweaked from there.

So, if you've read this, may I call upon you to lend an opinion below? Whether you are an artist or designer yourself, or someone who has seen business cards before, I'd appreciate the comments.

Next week I'll put a comment and reveal which one so far I think I like better, and which one I ultimately choose. Thanks!

Have you seen this Barosaurus?

A missing Barosaurus skeleton, 45% intact, has been found in the stygian depths of the Royal Ontario Museum.

Dazed and blinking, the barosaurus known only as Gordo was led out of the basement of the R.O.M. by his rescuer, Dr. David Evans. Gordo has not seen daylight since 1962, or his parents since 145 million B.P. (before present).

An appalling quantity of coprolites were found in Gordo's confined area of the museum's basement.

It has been speculated largely in the media that it may be difficult to reunite the long-confined sauropod with his family. Sources say they have not been sighted for about 145 million years, and were last seen carrying what may have been luggage, or a fern. Why they chose to leave the vulnerable 20 m ton Gordo behind remains a mystery.

Gordo, obviously shaken by his long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long ordeal, tried to lash out at photographers with his whiplike tail, and knocked a hotdog cart onto the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art's staircase. No one was injured and the steps are in good condition. Sources on the scene speculate this act may be due to Gordo's vegetarian lifestyle.

Artist Glendon Mellow rendered this conceptual drawing (above left) of what a missing poster may have looked like during Gordo's original estrangement from his parents and subsequent disappearance. An image like this is thought by some to have been circulated, possibly on a milk carton, or at least the Jurassic equivalant. Sources inside the museum claim there were no cows yet evolved when Gordo went missing. Other sources say, any artist who habitually paints wings on extinct aquatic arthropods is just nuts, but Mr. Mellow claims they are understandably jealous of his genius.

An excellent rendering by Michael W. Skrepnick of a barosaurus accompanied the newstand version of the story in the National Post.

Dr. Evans, the hero of this news story, has plans to reintroduce Gordo to society at the R.O.M.'s unveiling of its revamped dinosaur exhibit in the new Crystal galleries. The late Dr. Gordon Edmund is credited with the acquisition of this exciting fossil skeleton.

Open that sketchbook!

The Flying Trilobite is my filter for what I am most engaged by. This includes fascinating scientific work, interesting books, and painting and drawing.

Not every artistic specimen is Fine Art. On the sci-art listserv, there has been an interesting thread going about how private should your sketchbook be? I am usually fairly reserved with my own - signing sketches with ' Glendon Mellow Mr. Smarty-Artsie ' is not quite my thing.

Sketches differ from drawings in that drawings are finished pieces, with graphite or pencil, pastel or charcoal, grease pencil or skritchy quill, and sketches are the roughs, the studies. Sometimes my original pieces have an energy I like more than the final. This is what I am struggling with in my Richard Dawkins unauthorised portrait - I need to regain the energy of the sketch in my painting.

Here's a few of mine:

A winged pumpkin & a bubbly mermaid on the next page.

Michelle's foot.

Our hermit crab Shiny's first shell. Featuring some bling. Saucy!


Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil. I drew this on an Air Canada flight, Toronto to Calgary at about 38 511 feet, 459 mph. I like the thought of that. Hurtling through the air. Jerry Seinfeld said something about that once - that when you're in a vehicle, you're moving, but you're sitting still. I like the thought: I may not be da Vinci, but I can draw an extinct arthropod while that high up, at that speed.

A few sites by other people with great sketches:
Leslie d'Allesandro Hawes
Jesse Graham's Art
Jacqueline Rae's Art
Machaeroides88
xxhauntedxx
Digital Graphite

Want to add another link for sketches you like, or have done yourself? Please add it in the comments section!

In Strange Company: strangemag.com

I noticed while pursuing that vainest of pastimes, googling myself, that I was quoted on a site called strangemag.com. I hadn't come across this online 'zine before, and it's...umm, weird. Or odd. Unusual. A little different, yes.

It seems to be a mixed bag. The subject matter is credulous; everything from 'giantology' and smoking chimpanzees to UFO's and the pterodactyl 'Thunderbird'. Then it shifts, and often is debunking what it finds, playing the skeptic. I've come rather late to this magazine, as strangemag.com's founder, Mark Chorvinsky, has passed away in recent years. Seems like an interesting guy.

It prompted me to look up the term, "Fortean". I had seen the Fortean Times on magazine racks, and thought it kind of New Age-hokey. It seems there is a bit of a poke-in-the-eye attitude toward scientists, mixed with a different sort of skepticism than you see in Skeptic magazine. A quote from Fortean founder Charles Fort (at right) on Wikipedia: "Now there are so many scientists who believe in dowsing, that the suspicion comes to me that it may be only a myth after all". The Skeptic's Dictionary, always one of my favourite places, has an entry on Charles Fort as well.

The quote from my blog was from my posting about palaeontologist Dong Zhiming educating some Chinese rural folk who believed dinosaur fossils were really medicinal dragon bones. It feels somewhat strange for a person like myself, trying to be rational and understanding the scientific method to be quoted on a site near articles on Bigfoot. But what I've read so far shows these journalists are showing a healthy dose of skepticism and tracking their sources, as wild as the claims are.

It's interesting that skepticism falls along a spectrum rather than a discrete definition. But perhaps that's a scientific simile.

Fun with Trilobites!

Here are some of the more bizarre trilobite links I've come across the last few months while presenting my artowork on this blog.

Trilobites fluttering everywhere...
With over 6 billion people on the planet, you'd think I'd know that no idea is probably completely original any more. But I was still shocked (and later delighted) to see another site featuring trilobites with wings. The award-winning online comic Girl Genius by Phil & Kaja Foglio has just that, in the form of the Heterodyne logo. I suppose the juxtaposition is what is entrancing about the idea of a trilobite with wings. I've developed it after seeing the extended pleura halfway down the body of some trilobite families. What Girl Genius does is evoke an Eqyptian scarab. The comic has many avid fans, one of who alerted me to the similarity, (thanks Luna_the_Cat!) The comic is delightful and the artwork just brilliant.

For more inspired trilobite artwork, check out the alluring images by Jacqueline Rae on deviantArt.

Trilobite Cookies!
Aww, look at the cute little baby trilo- >bite!<

Look! Up in the sky!

The very cool work of Peter Lynn. Trilobite kites!

Trilobite molecules. Over 15 000 species wasn't enough, now they're invading physics. Run while you can!

Apparently, there is also a band...

You can never miss the best resource page online, by Sam Gon III, A Guide to the Order of Trilobites. There's even a pin-up once a month. Shake that pygidium! There's even a page about trilobite imposters, like those pesky isopods that fool so many people.

Three very cool words put together:
Robot. Trilobite. Vacuum. by Electrolux! I want one. Or two, they could mate and the robot uprising could start to evolve.

Has The Flying Trilobite missed anything else truly strange and wondrous? Please post a link!

Now I'm off to Calgary and the Alberta badlands for a week! I'll have lots of blogable material and hopefully some new drawings.

Page 3.14 profiles The Flying Trilobite

Page 3.14, the online editorial page of ScienceBlogs.com & Seed magazine, has an interview with me about my artwork and blog today!

Thanks to Virginia Hughes for taking the time!

Please check out this link, and keep your eye on the ever-changing content of ScienceBlogs.com. Their finger's on the pulse.

Mythical Flying Trilobite, oil paint on shale, 2007. Copyright Glendon Mellow.

Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil

This image was created for my friend Rudi's birthday this year. It is oil painted onto a slab of shale. My wife found the shale discarded from a roof in the Annex area here in Toronto.
The trilobite is modelled after Balcoracania, and once again I used the extra large pleura halfway down the body to create wings. This time, I have modelled them after bat wings instead of insect. The neat thing about this piece of shale is that it already had a natural hole descending through the slab, making it perfect for wall-hanging.