Art Monday: Trilobite Nest

A detail from a drawing I spent some time on while at Lake Simcoe a few years ago. The whole piece is called Trilobite Eggs For Cooking. In it, a young woman is being harried by a couple of flying trilobites after harvesting eggs. I just kind of liked the nest, drawn without reference despite me being surrounded by nature.

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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 - forgotten format

A few years ago, I became very excited by a possible format for a huge series of paintings.

The canvas was 12"x24", small-ish on the wall, but a comfortable size to depict some detail. My intention was to do a series of images blending human elements with unusual organisms that catch my fancy. I referred to it as a "Primer Series" to inform viewers about the subject matter I tend to paint.

The composition was straightforward. Over the years, I have found that we as human beings tend to enjoy and be intrigued by images of other human bodies. Not too surprising. So I put a human figure or at least partially human figure in the center to entice the eye, and draw viewers in. Around the human, I would place the fossil or organism, and as you can see in Life As a Trilobite, I blended the trilobite with the man.

Above and below the figure, I placed the thematic organism in series as an almost decorative element, possibly with labels. This idea was inspired in part I think, by my love of Alphonse Mucha's work, which you can see influenced Life With Diatoms quite a bit. Then, I planned on having a small card with the work's title and information about why the organism grouped with the human figure mattered so much. The Primer Series would then provide an introduction into the rest of my work. One of the main reasons behind using this format was that I found that many of my peers in university, my professors and my close friends did not necessarily share my interest in biology and paleontology. They enjoyed my paintings, but greater insight was a little closed off.

I had an art show with another excellent artist and close friend as my university days waned. When I exhibited Symbiosis (left, click in gallery to enlarge), a fellow coffee shop employee who was also a zoology major, asked me, "okay, if this means nothing to you, never mind, but in that painting with the green guy, is that a tardigrade?".

Replying that it was, she smiled and said, "I could tell because of those little hooked feet." It was an inspiration. Most people thought the painting looked cool, a little dark and creepy, and here was someone who understood the purple blobby thing hovering above the plinth.

So the plan was to draw in non-bio-paleo folks into the paintings with intriguing paintings of people, and then open them up to the wealth of creatures I find so fascinating, perhaps with an explanatory card off to the side.

When I took this show on the blogosphere almost two years ago, the beauty became that so many people who were also fascinated with these organisms find me.

There were others planned in the series. An ammonite, shells like ram's horns on his head. A Primer Series version of Symbiosis with the tardigrade looking all cute and water bear-ish.

Perhaps one day I'll begin explaining myself again.
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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.

2009 Calendar available for a limited time!

Calendar peeky-peep

Here's some more peeks at The Flying Trilobite 2009 Calendar.

March.This is the original Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil painted on shale. There should be a new one gracing my blog banner early in the New Year.

May.

June.

The calendar is available by clicking on the back-cover image in my sidebar, any of the images above, or by clicking here.

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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: Encrinurus

Here is the drawing along with the Tra-la-la-lobe-ite painting presented yesterday.

I just hope Walcott discovers what's in those presents. A big thanks to Marek Eby of eTrilobite for joining me in that epoch-old holiday of trilobites at Krismas/Solstice/Newtonmas/Haeckelmas. It just isn't the same without a glass of cinnamon-topped egg nog, a trilobite racing around underfoot and some lovely art.

If you'd like more trilobite art year 'round, why not pick up The Flying Trilobite 2009 Calendar?



Ahh, the holidays...Merry Krismas, everyone!
-Glendon

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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. 2009 Calendar now available!

Tra-la-la-lobe-ite!

Happy Holidays from The Flying Trilobite and eTrilobite!

Tra-la-la-lobe-ite, la, la, la, laaaa!

A brand-new oil painting/digital painting. From drawing to oil painting to digital painting in one day, and I still had time for a family gathering. (Hooray for coffee and egg nog!)

The talented Marek Eby of eTrilobite and I whipped up some three-lobed fun: now mosey on over to eTrilobite and see what Marek and his friend Walcott have been up to! And don't forget to browse eTrilobite's clothing shop!

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I've wanted to paint an Encrinurus trilobite for a while now: ever since reading in a Dorling Kindersley book that they are sometimes referred to as "the strawberry-headed trilobite". I've done a detailed drawing so in the spring I can produce a variant of this image with a strawberry theme. I think this one will make 2010's calendar.

(Don't miss The Disillusioned Taxonomist's excellent holiday paleo-art either!) Feel free to fill up some comments either here or at eTrilobite with other paleo-holiday art links!

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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. 2009 Calendar available now!

This weekend: A Trilobite Holiday Treat

Triple-lobed prehistoric yuley solsticey fun!

Marek Eby of eTrilobite and I will present a pair of holiday trilobite paintings over the weekend! Will Walcott be involved?

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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. 2009 Calendar available now!

Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle

"...Evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water.
"When challenged by a zealous Popperian to say how evolution could ever be falsified, J.B.S. Haldane famously growled: 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.' "No such anachronistic fossils have ever been authentically found..." -Richard Dawkins

-p127-128, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006.
Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN-13: 978-0-618-68000-9.

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Finally dry, a new scan of my Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle. Oil paint on 9 pieces of shale, 2008. Prints now available.


Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle (configuration A): False Rabbit
available as greeting cards, mounted print, matted print and canvas print. Click here.

Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle (configuration B): True Trilobites
available as greeting cards, mounted print, matted print and canvas print. Click here.
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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: it doesn't always work

Dark! Dark are the days when the artist's mind and hand will not act with confidence, but with trepidation, and lo, the monstrous paint that issues forth from his palette vexes him and plagues his talent. For true, not every act of creation can escape sucking.

This bombastic post is about the paintings that haven't been rehabilitated. I hope to have some news in the near future, and I am working on a number of projects a the moment. Today, I will shine a light on what happens when they don't work out.

Usually after reading some scientific discovery and musing about it, most ideas pop into my head like a full-blown image. I know what I should do to make it happen, and the idea is laid out in my mind's eye like pages in a book. I'm just copying from my imagination. If there are elements missing, well that's where research takes over, and I look for something appropriate to the subject.

Mother MarsThis oil painting languished unfinished for over a year. The Mother-Nature-on-Mars figure was complete, the sky complete and even the inscription (hard to make out on a blog) of "ALH84001" on the rock.

I stretched it myself, and seriously planned on painting over the entire image many, many times. It needed a baby, an egg, something at the start of life. Over and over I painted mermaid's purses, more accurately known as shark's eggs. The night before a gallery show, I frantically painted a huge microorganism complete with a chain of magnetite like they found in the infamous Martian meteorite. I kept stealing glances at it at the show. The painting surprised me. A wasted, dying mother nature and dying microbaby found dignity instead of a coat of black gesso.

Trilobite Graveyard (detail of headstone)


Which trilobitologist hasn't hoped to come across this legendary place? This painting is what unfortunately happens when I haven't thought it all the way through. In 2006 my wife challenged me to give a landscape a try, and I thought of an underwater scene, with yellow light for some reason, and a graveyard of trilobites stretching away into the distance. With well over 10 000 species recorded, this would be a fitting way to show their vast numbers,vast age, and the vast populations gone from our fair Earth.

I just couldn't pull it out of its ugly phase. (And, true to the nature of this post, my camera is broken and I seem to have deleted the photo of the whole image, and have only this detail. Arrgh, I say. )

I thought about anomalocaris prowling above, like predatory caretakers. It would add a mournful tone, for the predators can't outlast their prey for long, and add a sense of mystery as to what happened.

I thought about adding a fetching scuba diver to draw the viewer into the scene. Most people respond easily to an image they know, such as a human. Making it an attractive woman would also garner attention, and elements like long hair floating upward with bubbles would allow me to demonstrate the scene is underwater.

I thought about a monstrous underwater temple with a particularly spiky trilobite on top, off in the murky distance. Perhaps the trilobites were up to something sinister, or represented a vast empire in eldritch Cthulhu-esque prehistoric times?

So instead, this Art Monday, let me direct you to the following spectacular artwork that have themes -successfully!- similar to the Trilobite Graveyard:
various episodes of Walcott's Quarry at eTrilobite for the menacing anomalocarids;
at Druantia Art, an underwater scene in progress that is breathtaking even in unfinished form (buy her calender!);
bold rays of light not afraid to overlay some colour at The Day After;
and the beginnings of Cthulhu's rise at When Pigs Fly Returns.

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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: Art is Hard

Art is hard.

Last year I posted this:


The idea was a steampunkish device to aid the painter. I called it the Hyperferrule. Hooked up to the visual centre of the brain, it would enable me --uhhh, I mean the artist, heh-- to rapidly paint the image in their mind's eye. Swap out those mechanical finger-tip brushes, and the little arms could draw something using graphite and an eraser. Maybe a tortillon smudger would be in there too, to get some nice shadows going.

Lately, I keep thinking about this image. I'd love to do a self-portrait about it. Me, standing next to a canvas, one hand furiously painting, the other drawing. There'd need to be some stark shadows and studio light, an out-of-focus model nearby, perhaps human, perhaps fossil.

I keep thinking about it. And at the moment, that's all I can do.

This isn't intended to be a whiny, whinging complaint. I'm really striving for a lofty lament about the torturous and demanding muse so many artistic types suffer from. It's hard to tell the difference. If I was whining, I'd stamp my foot.

Creative blocks have never hit me. The more I sketch, or think about sketching, the more ideas start flowing. On my way home today, I stopped on the Queen West sidewalk near Claremont, pulled out my Moleskine and had to sketch a full-blown image of a landscape while blocking foot traffic. I struggle a bit with landscapes, and this one excited me. Stay tuned for the surprise.

Art is hard. There's a steady flow of ideas and I strive to get some of them down at least a bit in pencil. Aim for something interesting and maybe if I'm on my game, someone finds it astounding.

I wish I had Degas' money. Idle rich, nothing to do all day but paint vampiric-looking ballerinas and go to the track. Like many of the artists (and probably everyone) I don't have enough time. I have a full-time job, work with some great people and freelance on the side. The freelance is going well, I've got four projects currently on the go. They're a blast to do, people who really get me, I think.

But this Artwork Monday is all about the things unfinished, the ideas I haven't forgotten but I've left alone to wander and prowl about in my studio.

Remember this Dimetrodon-Sphinx?


I've played with it a bit digitally, to practice my digital work. I plan on getting a computer tablet later this year and I'd love to play with a couple of backgrounds. A mountain terrain, a street at night.

Over the summer I played with a piece I really enjoy, and in my head is filled with a soft riot of colour, Trilobitlepidoptology: It needs some shadows, and colour.

Last year, I embarrassed myself a little bit trying to do a portrait of Richard Dawkins. I even emailed his website folks.
Then, I tried a different technique, and killed the drawing. It only exists as a digital file now. I can resurrect it, print it on canvas paper and paint over it. I meant it to be a diptych with Carl Sagan. I'd really love to get back to it, Richard Dawkins' writing has inspired so much of my work. A humble tribute, sidetracked for now.

There's more. A dress based on a fossil, sketches for a kids' book of aliens evolving, a trilobite graveyard...

*sigh*

Next week on Artwork Mondays: Art is Easy

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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.

A perfect fanboy moment

Little known 'round these parts is that my 7 year old nephew and I are huge Star Wars fans. I've been collecting the 3.75" figures since I was three, and we rip open the packages and play with them all the time. Lately the Clones have been trying to thwart Indiana Jones from rescuing an Ewok cub, but that's another story. Admiral Ackbar is one of my favourites for his infamous, "It's a trap!" line.

You know when something that feels made for you comes along? I went into Silver Snail recently and found this:

...trilobite shield and shoulder pads included.

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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. Admiral Ackbar Rulez.

Artwork Mondays: two by two all twisted

Today, Artwork Monday is a bit different. Prepare for a rant.

I don't normally comment negatively on another artists' work. And indeed, I think the technical work displayed below is superb. Suuuu-perb! It's the subject matter that raises my ire.

My wife and I came across this tremendous sand sculpture last week at the Canadian National Exhibition, or The Ex, as we Torontonians refer to it.

Cutesy Noah's Ark. Mythological extinction for the kiddies.

As you can see, all the animals, two-by-two in their little happy smiles, are getting away from the Abrahamic god's cataclysmic flood. Alas, the poor unicorns are struggling to keep up, and we know what happened to them don't we? Did they make it?

Don't know? Read the sign:

So it doesn't matter how hard they paddle, for as author Timothy Findley showed, they are not wanted on the voyage.

I get it, I do. The Noah fable is easy for kids. The young toddlers can stretch their neurons a little, counting to the number two, matching everyone up, and trying to remember and pronounce each pair of animals. Some will be easy: dog! Some will be harder, and you must chuckle to yourself with pride when a baby attempts rhinoceros or hippopotamus. Noah always looks like Santa, white beard and a smile while feeding and petting the animals.

It's got plenty of play value for a tiny human brain to learn from. Often, they're even puzzles as well as toys!

It's the focus of the Noah's Ark story that bothers me. A myth where some ancient god drowns the world of sinners and only saves a few individuals from the animal kingdom. Okay fine, let's assume in this tale that the humans all deserved it, or something. (Even the babies?) Just leave that notion over there on the table for a moment.

How to explain the wholesale slaughter, nay, extinction of all the other land animals on Earth? Umm, "yay, the filthy unicorns are all dead?" Don't tell the Church of You-Know-Who. Take that, lemur population! Take that, wallabies! Take that, star-nosed moles! Yes my, what a cheering story.

It's so twisted. The kids are encouraged to focus on the survivors, as if the flood is a natural disaster, and Noah's elite are snug in their berths. But the fable says this was done by an intelligent entity. It's not a cataclysm, it's callous pre-meditated murder. The millions and millions of organisms (billions with the insects) that drown are just left out of focus. The fable even reinforces the whole two-by-two-hetero-only stereotype.

Richard Dawkins' critics often claim he is a big meanie, and I suspect they are thinking of this quote:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all
fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a
vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic-cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist,
infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical,
sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p31.

If you ask me, he left out "extinction-generator" or "species-cidal" or something of the like.

Extinctions have fascinated me since I was a kid. The images painted by so many paleo-illustrators always had an eerie, otherworldly look to them: yellow clouds, sauropod heads looking up at the light on the horizon. Or dark cobalt skies, rife with clouds and lightning, as a few shrew-like mammals hide in the shelter of a predator's skeleton. I remember trying to stretch my mind into the expanse of years, and imagine how could the turtles and crocodiles survive?

When I drew Lord Extinction Yawns, I began with the two-by-two. I was not raised in any particular religion, and my brain had not really dawned into atheism yet. You can see the pair of trilobites I started with, though I later differentiated them with a very unlikely tail.

My idea behind this drawing was to put an allegorical face on the concept of extinction, much like many Symbolist paintings put a face on Death. I needed Extinction to be stranger, more primal, and powerful. When he idly yawned, that's when the spirits of extinct animals can swirl out of his maw of perfect teeth. Extinction is ugly. My apologies to the artist of such talent who created the Ark above, but I don't take the story that lightly.

Next time you need to buy a toddler some cutesy animal toys, why not a little rainforest set, or if you really need to hand them some scary extinction toys, be old-fashioned and grab some plastic prehistory. And then explain how some dinosaurs' descendants took flight, and marvel at the splendor of the history of the animal kingdom taking wing in a child's mind.

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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. Except, I ain't taking credit for the well-crafted sand sculpture. I hope next year the Ex has a Permian extinction in sand instead.

Artwork Mondays: Flying Trilobites Abound

Is there something deep within the human brain that feels the need to put wings on animals that could never fly? Extinct, aquatic, many-limbed animals that could never fly?

Here's an image of a fence adorned with a series of prehistoric creatures. Take a look at the winged trilobite there. I took this photo on the Toronto Islands earlier this summer, on Ward's Island. If anyone knows who the artist was, I'd love it if you could comment below. There was no plaque as far as I could see, and there should be. (And that bird is sitting on top, looking so smug.)

Here's a birthday present to me from the talented Craig Dylke, and his good friend Traumador the Tyrannosaur. Craig is the talented artist and force of nature behind Prehistoric Insanity and Weapon of Mass Imagination. Traumador's exploits can be seen at The Tyrannosaur Chronicles. Oh, and this picture disturbs me. I envision them swooping down and stealing Albertan cattle.

My 7-year old nephew, formerly identified 'round these parts as Obi-Wan, but who now goes by Dr. Jones, drew a few of these for me. He also rolled his eyes and asked why I like trilobites so much.
Which is a great question. The short answer was that they have the first eyes we know of in the fossil record. So right there should mean that every visual artist should take them up as our symbol, our banner. Like, tomorrow. They were incredibly successful organisms, their legacy spanning millions of years, compared to the short span of hominids so far.

For me, flying trilobites have been a part of my artwork for years, and discovering Girl Genius was something of a shock, so soon after I made my online debut last year. But it's cool. I exchanged a couple of emails with the Foglios and they've been kind enough to link to me. Non-overlapping magisteria between their Gaslamp Fantasy and my Art in Awe of Science.

This fine specimen...
...is one of my favourites, obviously from the blog banner above (and available as card, print and canvas print in the store, as well). Painting on shale is terrific, although very hard on brushes. It began when my wonderful wife brought home some shale roof tiles that had been blown off a roof in the Annex area of Toronto. She also puts micron brushes in my stocking at Christmas.

More fun with trilobites and links, here! Cookies! Kites! Molecules!

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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. Some guest artwork featured in this post, and attributed above.

Artwork Mondays: Trilobitlepidoptology

From the notes of the renowned pioneer in the field of trilobitlepidotology, Dame Francesca Pithclade-Jolly;

"Some of the coarser naturalists in the field say I have quite man-like hands, but to them I say bother and damnation! Could hands less delicate than mine have mounted such fine specimens?"

This drawing is a continuation of the sketch from a couple of weeks ago, before I left for a cottage. Right after completing this piece, we went to the stellar Blue Willow Butterflies & Blooms center near Sutton, Ontario. Now I've got some nifty new photos to work from if I continue reading the works of Dame Pithclade-Jolly on trilobitlepidoptology.

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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.

I got invited to a Cocktail Party!

Writer Jennifer Ouellette wonders But is it art? over at Cocktail Party Physics. It's a great article, featuring many different artists and visually-creative people who incorporate science into their work. Ms. Ouellette has included my oil painting, My Life With Trilobites, in the article. Nifty!

In particular I am impressed with the work of skateboarder/artist Lia Halloran. All the work is pretty cool.

The supposed division between artists and scientists is so small, and so many other people like myself straddle both worlds. It make organising my blogroll tough, and interesting.

I mean, where do you place people like the talented Marek Eby, who has created such iconic images and clothing of prehistoric creatures and blogs about palaeontology? I have him in science right now, but his cartoons and images could easily go the other way. Same with Fresh Brainz, and Laelaps - both feature excellent photography on a regular basis.

On the flipside, I have placed Bond's Blog, Prehistoric Insanity, Olduvai George and When Pigs Fly Returns in my artsy links, to name a few. Each of these talented people features artwork ranging from line drawings to 3D rendering from time to time, and each is strongly interested or involved in palaeontology.

All this means to me, I think is that art and science do not need to be told to stay on their own side in the back seat. We can play nice.

One last question though: where do you place The Flying Trilobite? Under art, or science?
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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: White Trilobite

*sigh*
Not every painting is close enough to perfect for the artist to feel happy about it. Sometimes I hesitate to post sketches, fretting I'm not putting my best foot forward. This oil painting is a sketch too, of sorts, although at the time I intended it to become a final illustration.

A few years ago, I had an idea for a story book, about a trilobite on a quest. It would have been a bit dream-like as far as narrative, mostly a thin thread tying together a series of images I had in mind. This was to be the first illustration, a trilobite illuminated by a powerful shaft of light from an angler fish or other bioluminescent denizen of the deep.

The image is missing an entry point for the viewer, either a fish or person watching the scene alongside our view, or a nearby plant. There is nothing floating in the murk in the distance, or any refuge points for the viewer to grasp on to. The composition needs a lot of work. And our hero needs eyes and maybe even some corrected anatomy.

It is possible I've grown enough as an artist I could paint the rest to my satisfaction, and even a few simple circular white flecks done hastily in Photoshop have piqued my interest again. I like the idea of a trilobite able to change its colour to match its environment like a squid or chameleaon, and it would have throughout the story.

So many ideas, so little time.
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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: Trilobite Souls Ascending

In keeping with last week's Symbolist-inspired Artwork Monday, (and due to an exciting and pressing illustration for someone I admire), here is another drawing from many moons ago, slightly post-university.

Trilobite Souls Ascending

Again like last week, a confused muddle.

The trilobites each have one glowing human eye and eyelid floating above their wee heads. The eye is rolled upward, half-under the eyelid in Symbolist-era shorthand for "gazing inward". Being in a half-awake, half-alive state was big for Symbolists, though I'm sure the opium and absinthe had nothing to do with it, it was simply dismay at industrialisation and a sense of macabre romance.
Sadly, these are not very scientifically accurate. Please Marek, don't throw any pointy odontopleurida at me. They prickle. I was young and naive when I drew this. Everyone please feel free to have a look at some other trilobites I've worked on by clicking on this handy link rrrrright---> here.

Next week: something a little more current. (Oh...oh...current! Like the water in this drawing? Like trilobites are old? KnowwhutImean? 'Ey? )

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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: Salome + the Head of Extinction

For this Artwork Monday, I'd like to show an older concept drawing from the heady university days I spent enthralled with Symbolist Art.

For a while I played with compositional elements from works and themes of favoured by the Symbolists and other mopey fin-de-siecle proto-goth artists, and attempted to add a pantheon of science-based creations. Lord Extinction was one such attempt, I wanted a monstrous figure who ate species and D.N.A. and in my second post here on The Flying Trilobite, I showed his first drawing, also seen here in miniature, in Lord Extinction Yawns, (right).

I drew the Lord Extinction character again, this time aiming to mimic the popular Salome-and-head-of-John-the-Baptist theme. Here is Salome + the Head of Extinction.

Okay, deep breath. I am actually showing this one online.

I look back on this piece as a major muddle. It had one of the figures of the Candle-Women that appear in my work every so often in the role of Salome. I attempted a bit of gothy clothing with the fishnets, a a strange (in my head, witchy) crescent moon sickle. There's a little trilobite helping her out for revenge, perhaps for its brethren that escaped Extinction's maw in the previous drawing. The Candle-Women originally started out as Rapa Nui (Easter Island) statues, and evolved into candle-headed enigmas.

This was in a confused stage of my life, coming out of non-organised, egotistical Pagan-ish beliefs, and re-focusing on the scientific past that had enamoured me as a child.

I'm showing this piece because for me, the confusion is all there. Extinct creatures. Original characters from my imagination. Muddled religion and paganism. An artwork style of the past that I desperately tried to inject with originality. Gothy fashion just standing there irrelevantly. Ahh, university!

For me like many people, it was a time of figuring myself out. I'd like to think that journey hasn't ended, and in another 10 years, will I look back at a simple drawing and see so many echoes of my past exposed in graphite?

I thought the line work was pretty decent, though it may not survive jpeg compression. Recently I revamped the Dimetrodon-Sphinx from the corner of Lord Extinction Yawns; perhaps Lord Extinction will one day rear his magnificently ugly head as well.

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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: details from The Forever Painting

I'm hard at work on another project, so I thought I'd post a couple of up-close details of The Forever Painting that were too difficult to see in a previous post when they were only a couple of pixels high. You can also see it in my gallery on DeviantArt.
An insect-winged trilobite emerging from the candle smoke.


Fossils visible in the rocky candle surface.

(Now back to work!)

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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: Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle

Configuration 1: False Precambrian Rabbit

Configuration 2: True Precambrian Trilobites

*You can see a bit more about this painting, and some comments at the last edition of The Boneyard, hosted here by yours truly. The title and concept refer to a quote by biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who, when asked what it would take to falsify the fossil record of evolution by natural selection, replied, "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian,".

Colours I used:
Naples Yellow - I actually tried not to use it. It's my favorite, I put it on everything. Can't help myself.
Zinc + Titanium White
Titanium White
Payne's Grey
Olive Green
Oxide Black - whoever claimed mixing your own black looks the most real (probably one of the Impressionists) obviously never tried a really good black pigment. It's not true you can mix every colour from the primaries when it comes to painting. The pigments all have their own chemical composition and chromatic values, that interact when mixed in different ways.
Quinacradone Orange
Fragonard Red Brown
Fragonard Earth Yellow
Gold - a sparkly colour I like using for the trilobite's eyes, and sometimes as a fringe around their bodies, the way Richard Fortey described pyrite from microbes outlining their soft body parts and legs in Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution. A most excellent book, thoroughly engaging.
Monochrome Tint Warm
Raw Umber

I mainly used linseed oil, with a smattering of walnut oil in some of the rabbit's whites. Linseed oil is a strong, flexible oil with a tendency to yellow a bit as it ages. Walnut is clear, not likely to turn yellow, and brittle and prone to cracking, especially after about 10 years on a canvas that bounces and bends. Since these pieces are on shale, I assume it will hold them up alright, and not bounce like it would on a stretched canvas.

The 9 pieces of shale are originally coasters for drinks, complete with felt on the bottom, which should keep them from shattering in ways to make me weep. It's a good enough idea I may use it on my other paintings on shale. I coated the shale with clear acrylic gesso to keep the oils from sinking into the stone. If oils do sink into a painting, whatever the surface, it makes it look splotchy, with some areas of glossy oil, and matte sunken areas. Retouching varnish should get the sunken oil back to bright glossiness.

For brushes, I used a variety of tiny soft synthetics, mostly with golden taklon bristles. The Shale can be a little rough on the brushes, so nothing too expensive. I'm falling in love with my Micron filbert brush.

For solvent, I used very little in the painting itself. I tend to use Turpenoid Natural, a non-toxic alternative to turpentine and odorless solvents. The problems with traditional solvents are legion. They tend to sit in your fatty tissues causing cancer for one thing. It also has a mild pine odor, not unpleasant. Breathing typical hydrocarbon-based odorless solvents is still bad for you.

Usually, when I tell people I paint in oil, they say, "Oh, I tried it but the oil fumes gave me headaches." It's not the oil, it's the solvents. Oil paint is literally a vegetable-derived oil mixed with some colourful pigment-particles. The pigments don't release toxins into the air, although with a few you need a proper mask if you are airbrushing. Breathing in the oil is the equivalent of breathing in the olive oil & balsamic vinegar you dip your bread in. Nothing to get worked up about. Unless you accidentally eat a jumbo chili flake.

I'm proud of this piece. Excuse me, I need to get some soy milk to wash the burning chili sensation out of my skull.

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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.

Tiny Flying Trilobite Tidbits

Tidbit: Tomorrow The Boneyard XXI comes to The Flying Trilobite! It's not too late to submit your paleo-related articles and artwork! I'll be showing some nifty links to a lot of talented artists, as well as links to the science that inspires paleo-art in the first place! Simply email me to alert me to your article or art!

Tidbit: Inspired by late biologist J.B.S. Haldane, my new oil painting-puzzle on shale, PreCambrian Rabbit/Trilobites will be unveiled in tomorrow's edition of The Boneyard! You can see a bit about it in a couple of the past Artwork Mondays.

Tidbit: My new Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil tattoo is up at Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium!

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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.