Beetle Week Day 1: The Challenge of Scientific Illustration

Welcome to Day 1 of Beetle Week 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 dead-tree book. The result?  My first series of scientific illustrations, instead of the off-kilter, surreal scientific illustrations I'm known for. Today: The Challenge of Scientific Illustration.

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I've been painting for a couple of decades, and blogging my artwork for over 5 years. One of the joys of this career is that there's always more to learn, more challenges, more surprises.

When Morgan Jackson first approached me about contributing 7 Ontario jewel beetle illustrations for an upcoming publications he and researchers at the University of Guelph are working on, I was excited about the idea and also a little intimidated. 

Although I sometimes head to the Royal Ontario Museum to work on realistic drawings of fossil skulls, they are mainly exercises for myself, and not overseen by researcher in the field. I assume they do add a little to my professional street cred since this blog is frequented by paleontologists and paleo-art fans. Morgan's request was different. These needed to be spot-on scientific illustrations, useful for the purpose of identifying some of Ontario's diverse species.

So, I did what I usually do when trying to depict a new subject: got out my Strathmore Bristol paper and trusty .3mm mechanical pencil and started to draw in high detail. The project called for 7 species, and I decided to start in alphabetical order, with Agrilaxia.

Agrilaxia drawing, © Glendon Mellow

As I mentioned above, Morgan is an amazing nature photographer (seriously. Check this out. Or this.) Though I wasn't able to visit his lab, he provided me with stunning dorsal, ventral, side and genitalia(!) views of the beetles to illustrate.

And after scanning the drawing above, and opening up my favourite digital painting program, ArtRage Studio Pro, that's when I got cold feet. I mean, how realistic does the painting need to be?  You can zoom almost an infinite amount in a digital painting, and the high-res macro photos Morgan zipped and sent to me allowed a huge level of detail.

As I was zoomed in, I starting getting that creep of imposter syndrome. How could I possibly match a photo with a painting?

A cup of coffee later, and I started to relax. Morgan and his team were looking for scientific illustrations, for paintings, and I know he's viewed my portfolio. Making everything super-hyper-photo real wasn't the goal. I hoped.

I settled in and began to paint.

Screenshot of painting Agrilaxia in ArtRage Studio Pro, with Morgan Jackson's photo references on the left.

I'll say more about the process of painting with ArtRage tomorrow.  It's enough to say I employed a wide variety of that robust program's painting tools, and started to enjoy myself. I emailed some in process shots of Agrilaxia to Morgan, and to a couple of artists who's opinions and discretion I could trust.  I can count on them to keep me honest, and the reactions were positive.

Part way through the process of painting the beetles, I recall Morgan letting me know some of the other researchers were getting accustomed to my art style, or some words to that effect. Important feedback that sends me into a hyperactive state of focus, trying to ramp up my accuracy and tighten up the work.

Accurate enough? Final, almost full-res version of Agrilaxia. © Glendon Mellow

It was a lesson for me as an illustrator, and also one for researchers considering hiring an illustrator. Chances are, if you are not going with photography, there will always be a little of the artist's style - the movement of their hand, the colour associations in their eye - that is inherent in the final  illustration. It's the sum of the illustrator's experiences up to that point in their career coupled with doing something new.

That said, being a scientific illustrator carries the responsibility of taming style in the service of the twin aspects of accuracy and clarity.

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Stay tuned for the rest of 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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Contest banner at Science3.0

Mark Hahnel of Science 3.0 asked if he could use one of my dinosaur drawings for a contest banner on their network - I said sure!  My artwork is under a Creative Commons Licence that says it can be freely shared so long as no money is involved, it's not altered and I get credit. In this case it needed to be altered - but Mark asked, and hey, that's what the licence is supposed to encourage. This has been your copyright service announcement for the day.

Here's the Oviraptorosaur skull incorporated into the contest banner.

I drew this handsome fella a couple of years back at the Royal Ontario Museum.

More importantly, check out the contest!  

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Style Question

As I wander aimlessly in the woods of a webcomic sketchy experiment thing in an attempt to both develop new skills and get the Trilobite Boy story down, I come to the question of style. Here are all the panels so far, in order, of the Trilobite Boy webcomic. Click to enlarge.

What's your favourite image so far?

Spoilers after the jump: 

Trilobite Boy #5: Arrival

The new page is up! 

This is a lower quality version than the one at the webcomic. Click to see it!

I did this one in ArtRage 3, mostly with the watercolours. The Royal Ontario Museum is one of my favourite places to go and draw, and I've loved it since I was a kid. The new design is something I wanted to highlight too. It's stunning.

You can also view the new page large, here, or below the fold.

Museum Robot Guard - wip

©  Glendon Mellow 2011

Say hello to Mr. G, the Museum Robot Guard.  Or at least his upper torso, it's a work-in-progress. Originally that thing in his chest didn't start out as an eye, but it's kind of gone that way.  Thinking about WWI biplanes when I painted this.

Working on the last panel of the next Trilobite Boy page in ArtRage 3.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Trilobite Boy arrives at the ROM - wip

Here's what's on my desktop this morning. Trilobite Boy arriving at the Royal Ontario Museum.  It's a work-in-progress.  

Click to enlarge.

Getting used to ArtRage 3, loving some of the tools.  The rulers are helpful, and right after I took this screenshot I realized I can use the frosted palette knife on the lettering. I'm aiming to ink the outlines and use the watercolour brushes for the colour - I love adding random little drops of water and paint on the image. Hoping to give it a bit more of an animated/anime look in this panel. 

I love both the old and new R.O.M. and can't wait to paint the building in the next panel.

You can see the beginning of Trilobite Boy's adventure on my webcomic Tumblr, and some clothes & stickers in my merch store.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Art Monday: dinosaur skull sketches

A few past dinosaur skull sketches, mostly made at the Royal Ontario Museum. All done with .3mm or 2mm technical pencil in my trusty Moleskine sketchbooks.

Pachycephalosaurus. Original post here.

Parasaurolophus. Original post here.


Oviraptorosaur. Original post here.

Gryposaurus. Original post here.

The contours and shadows are endlessly fascinating to draw. I gotta get a new ROM membership.

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

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ART Evolved - the launch! pkkk-keeww! (that's a launching noise)

ART Evolved: Life's Time Capsule makes its mark on the innertubes today!

A gathering of 11 blogging paleo-artists, we're launching with a group gallery filled with horned frilliness. Ceratopsian dinosaurs! Drop by and make a comment or twenty.

I've chosen to paint a chasmosaurus, entitled Introducing Sara Chasm. Chasmosaurus is one of my very favourite fossils that I've been visiting since I was a kid at the Royal Ontario Museum. I've anthropomorphized her a tad. "Making of" post to appear right here tomorrow.

You can also read bios of each artist , and here's mine. Our membership consists of:
Raven Amos
Peter Bond
Sean Craven
Craig Dylke
Marek Eby
Scott Elyard
Mo Hassan
Glendon Mellow
Zachary Miller
Angie Rodrigues
Ville Sinkkonen

We'll need to work on an "Avengers Assemble" paleo-artsy battle cry.

There's some tremendous talent at Art Evolved, I just couldn't say no to being a part of it. And a special thanks to Craig Dylke and Peter Bond, our administrators.

Why are you still here?! I said Ceratopsians! Get to ART Evolved!


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Art Monday: inspiration interruption

Inspiration can strike at unlikely times. Usually, once I feel bogged down and frustrated while waiting for the oil layers to become tacky and the details to swim up and wow my eye, I am struck by competing compositions that fight my attention.

This time I'm going with it. Yeah, sure I have a sketchbook-load of ideas waiting to jump out this year, but I need to explore this Darwin and South American mammal fossil thing for a bit. My wife was great, just said go for it. Sure I spent ten hours drawing, painting and liveblogging; but I'm going where the Muse leads me.

So here's is where I left Charles since Darwin Day, discovering our friend the glyptodon.

It's not complete, and I'm still working on it. Remind me to fix the wrist. And the sky remains a mystery for now.

But I'm not about to abandon two of the other ideas that have been rattling around in my brain, waiting for release through my micro-paintbrushes.

Here's the beginning of one. I was hoping to sketch megatherium, but it turns out the Royal Ontario Museum doesn't have one on display. So, after a hasty 20 minutes between work ending and the R.O.M. closing, I sketched the distinguished skull on the left, an eremotherium.

You may notice I was looking up at it. On the right is the glyptodon again, a new drawing.

There will be more to this image, including Charles. To picture him, think of this quote: "He should be quite well-protected. If he survived the freezing process, that is."

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.
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Art Monday: hadrosaur sketching at the museum

Some museum sketching pics from November, taken at the Royal Ontario Museum.

My nephew and I sketching a Corythosaurus skull he found interesting. He's part of the Explorer's Club there, and received a nice treasure for all the visits this year.
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Comparing my Gryposaurus incurvimanus drawing to the original. I like the interesting reflections of the new Crystal architecture on the glass in this shot.
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The Gryposaurus skull drawing is also featured as one of the dozen months of 2009 in my 1st-ever calendar, on sale for about 23 bucks. And there's still time to get it for the New Year.- -
All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

My favourite museum.

My submission for The Boneyard #26 over at Traumador the Tyrannosaur: The Royal Ontario Museum.

I love the ornate, classic entrance with its detailed relief.

I love the looming new Crystal, crashing into the old building.
The pachycephalosaur intimidates me and enthralls me, lit from below with a purple light.

I love to go there and draw prehistoric skulls, and interact with extinct creatures that never imagined me - and wonder what in the future I am not imagining.

Gordo is wickedcool. You can't take in his whole skeleton in a glance in the space. I love that children and adults can see him from the street.

I'm disappointed no one got my oreodont joke last year: "an early mammal, the oreodont, and it looks like some predator only licked out the soft middle and left the cookie parts intact".

The museum brings out the child in me.

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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

Art Monday: Gryposaurus skull sketch

Went to the Royal Ontario Museum last Friday, and spent some time with the museum's original dinosaur skeleton, Gryposaurus incurvimanus.

Sketching in a public space is always an interesting activity. I throw on my iPod to draw only if I'm on a secluded bench outdoors. Otherwise, you can miss the comments from curious passers-by.

I was asked if I was a student, or there with my art class, about 4 or 5 times. I'll take that as a compliment that I look younger than I am! Kids are funny, they are so-o-o curious about what you're doing, but inherently polite enough to hover until they're invited to have a look. Some young guys told me they like to draw and think dinosaurs are interesting too: I hope they're inspired. It's nice to chat with parents, teachers and students on trips about why I'm there.

I think the reason I'm there is mainly because it's relaxing and challenging to try and accurately draw an animal skull or fossil.

Drawing in public is one of those times an artist can receive immediate feedback. Thanks to my fellow visitors for the encouragement. My one wish is that the museum's hours were a little different. The only night they're open later than 5:30pm is Fridays, which is a tough night to commit to drawing every week.

The gryposaurus was the R.O.M.'s first fossil dinosaur, collected in 1918 from Drumheller Alberta, and installed in 1920. A nice, big, honkin' duckbill. I was standing kind of close, looking up at it, so the drawing is not entirely a side-view. I spent more time on it than I had for some of the other images I've drawn from the R.O.M., and I'm mostly happy with the proportions.

Here's some other fossil skull sketches from my gallery. I've thought about offering prints in my repro shop...perhaps in the new year.

Hmm. Which fossil in the R.O.M. should I tackle next?

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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

Artwork Mondays: a painting's "aura"

Today, I'd like to touch on how the artist feels about their own work, and its "aura", and how that differs for the Fine Artist versus the Illustrator. And no, I haven't lost my skeptical, rational mind.

The idea of a painting's aura is one I remember being presented without judgment by the prof in university. The concept has stayed with me.

It's the notion that original paintings have an "aura" that emanates off the paint & canvas surface. Almost as though the original painting has a soul, or a living presence you sense when looking at it. It adds to their specialness. You have not truly experienced the painting until you've seen it in person. Our teachers tried to impart that this is mainly a macho, modernist idea.

In Fine Art, the modernist period was something fairly specific. To sum it up all too briefly, modernism in painting was "paintings with the subject matter of paint". You weren't painting a still-life of an apple: you were painting red paint. As an example, think of something by Rothko, or Pollock. Giant humongous canvases, covered usually in a couple of dominating colours. There was a lot of baggage that went along with this type of work, including that they should not ideally be viewed as reproductions.

Post-modernism in the fine art world, was (again, gross oversimplification) about deconstructing those modernist ideals of pure paint and pure sculpture, and of overthrowing the unique. A post-modern piece of art could contain both a painting and sculpture adjacent as one piece. Take that, modernist!

To look at one example, modernist Charles Demuth created the painting Figure Five in Gold, (1928). Classic Modernism, interplay of colour over a familiar, somewhat random symbol (5) we all know. It's distinct, and certainly was in '28.

Post-modern painter Robert Indiana created this painting,The Figure Five, (1963) as a way of overthrowing the originality of Demuth's Five. He disrupted the original by Demuth's claim to importance by making it one of many instead of unique. I see it as kind of a fine art world version of "screw you".


So paintings may have an aura you can only feel in the presence of the actual artwork, not a reproduction? Not likely. This smacks of vague New Age-y feelings-as-fact. I wondered about this idea for a long time. An exhibit, entitled 7 Florentine Heads came to the Art Gallery of Ontario, and I remember there was to be a Da Vinci drawing included. When I saw it, I anticipated the moment. I frickin' love Da Vinci, and his interest in science as well as his sfumato technique. I looked at each drawing in turn. Looked at one, read the placard, and saw it was his. I got an involuntary shiver down my back. Was it the aura?

Even back then in my proto-skeptical days, I knew there wasn't. I only felt it's "specialness" after reading who it was by. Looking only at the drawing, I saw another example of excellent work by a Renaissance artist. Context mattered to the aura, it seemed. Which brings me to addressing the photos of posters peppered throughout this post. Is one of the differences between an illustrator and a fine artist -at least, a modernist one- how they feel about a painting's uniqueness and supremacy of being the original?

Recently, the artist (and good friend of mine) Christopher Zenga took his artwork online for the first time. And when discussing how the first couple of posts about his Zombears looked glowing off of the computer screen, Chris remarked to me, that he just sat back and stared at them; he was entranced by his own artwork reproduced in a different medium.

Chris is right. I was elated for months looking at my paintings and drawings online, and knowing others might see something of value there. Do I have a fondness for the originals? Of course. Some are hanging in my living room. And yet there is an undeniable thrill to walk down the streets of Toronto and see a poster up with artwork I laboured over.
Starting with a discussion on the nature of art over at Laelaps, author of Renaissance Oaf Sean Craven has had a lot of excellent points about whether how to judge if a piece of artwork can be deemed "art".

I would put forth there is a difference between art created for the purpose of Illustration, and Fine Art, and a small part of that difference is in how the artist feels toward reproductions. The tingly feeling is enhanced when the image leaps forth to new media and many eyeballs.

The photos throughout this post were taken downtown at the University of Toronto campus, and are of my poster for the upcoming lecture by PZ Myers presented by the Centre for Inquiry Ontario.

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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

Artwork Mondays: Sketchy Sketches

A couple of pages from my sketchbook for this Artwork Monday.

I'll leave my commentary to a minimum this week, but please go nuts critiquing the rough work if you want. Just no one tell Carl Buell about the megatherium skull below. I'm worried he'll point and chuckle in a manly way.
The megatherium is a cast that was included in the Darwin: The Evolution Revolution show at the Royal Ontario Museum, finishing up August 4th. The contours of this skull were pretty unusual. I think the sketch has a decent sense of 3-dimensionality, but the anatomy may be a little off. Also pictured are chimp and quetzalcoatlus skulls. The R.O.M. has mounted a quetzalcoatlus skeleton that is awesome and terrifying. Makes me want to curl up with The World Beneath by James Gurney.

This is a sketch for a painting I may begin soon. I've got some nifty water-soluble pencil crayons that might suit this piece.

This seems like the perfect idea to doodle with while I'm away at the cottage in August.

I should have some news the first week of August as well. I'm busting with it. I'll also begin posting a little more regularly again this week beyond the Artwork Mondays.
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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details.

Artwork Mondays: Oviraptorosaur sketch

A sketch of the Royal Ontario Museum's lovely oviraptorosaur cast. Look at that eye!
It is a little rougher than two previous dinosaur skull drawings. The museum was closing, within 15 minutes of me starting this sketch.

If you like this sort of pencil-work, you can see a parasaurolophus and pachycephalasaurus I have done previously as well. I love the R.O.M., especially since the addition of the Crystal; it's one of the many reasons I am never bored living in the city of Toronto.
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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. No Oviraptors were harmed by the artist in the production of this sketch. It may have been harmed by a mudslide not due to human intervention.

Artwork Mondays: reference & when not to use it

The revamp of my Dimetrodon-Sphinx concept from over a decade ago continues. The original drawing is below, and is part of a larger drawing seen here.

And below, is where I am so far.

To reach this stage, it was important to use a lot of reference. A part of this exercise was to see how much I may have improved. A lot of that improvement likely comes from using references, such as a model for the woman's body, and looking at other artists' representations of living dimetrodons for the back-half. As well, I used these two photos I took last summer when visiting the Royal Tyrrell Museum.












(Actually, I'm not sure that the one on the left in the left-hand photo is actually a dimetrodon; the head seems to be quite a different shape. A pelycosaur nonetheless. )

There is still some work to do. I thought I might be able to complete the drawing in time this week.

I struggled a lot with the hair. I tried tiaras, an Egyptian sphinx headdress, no hair, tight curls, messy hair whipping in the wind, and even the bob on the one in the original. Eventually I decided to go with slick wet hair, as I could be fun to paint this as a rainy scene.

The mouth and lips are way off, and will need some work, and I messed up the left hand. One of the ways many artists' check the progress of a composition or the realism if a piece, is to flip it:

This allows some mistakes to jump out, and gives the familiar pencil strokes a foreign eye, as a viewer will likely have for the first time they see it. Looking at the piece in the mirror is one way, and using Photoshop is another great way to try this technique. Remember though, that no face or body is perfectly symmetrical, not even Pac-Man's. (Look close, you'll see his left eye is 1 pixel closer to his nose than his right.) I think the Sphinx's hair could be more ropy and knotty.

Looking at the lone dimetrodon above, I can see there are about 24 of the long vertebra supporting the sail. My Sphinx's pretty back is not long enough to support quite that many, so here is a point where reference and I part company. Another is in the feet. When I was at the Royal Ontario Museum's Darwin exhibit recently, I was reminded of how fascinated I am by the irregular-looking toes of an iguana. And so, I abandoned the realism of a dimetrodon's no-doubt noble foot, in favour of the broken-looking toes of the green iguana. And to top it off, I didn't use a reference *gasp*.

This piece seems to evoke a night-time feel to me, and so I began roughing in some rocky shapes in the background, and darkening the sail to illustrate the translucency and rock silhouettes showing through. Last week, I spoke about the possibilities of camouflage. Now, I think any colouration choices would have to wait for me to paint the piece.

Will I add colour? It's at the right stage for it. A scan and print onto canvas-paper and I could apply my oils. There's some great tips on colouring and texturing using Photoshop in ImagineFX, a magazine I just picked up a couple of weeks ago. However I've spent longer on this drawing than I thought I would over the last few Artwork Mondays. Next week, it may be time to move onto something new.
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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details.