Lochlan Mellow

Dear Everyone-We-Know,

The evolutionary legacy of an upright posture,
a clever mind
opposable thumbs,
acute visual sense,
a talent for pattern-finding
and a love of metaphor
Has been passed down through
an exploded star,
a planet,
life,
to chordates,
to mammals,
to apes,
to humans,
to Michelle and Glendon,
and finally, on January 20th 2014 at 9:20pm to Lochlan Charles Follett Mellow.

                             

Lochlan Mellow has entered the universe's history at 7 lb 12 oz , to the
delight of his family and has all the potential in the world to be a
tool-user, a thinker, a metaphor-maker, an artist, a scientist, a poet, and most likely a source of surprise. 

He joins his excited, caring brother <a href="http://glendonmellow.blogspot.ca/2010/12/calvin-mellow.html">Calvin</a>. Calvin has taught us that the growing mind of a baby is a series of mysteries unfolding and being solved. 

Thanks to everyone online and off, for their words of support and enthusiasm. Most of all, our deepest thanks to the nurses, doctors, specialists and students at Mount Sinai Hospital here in Toronto. Both of our sons arrived in the same delivery room (Go room 7!) to talented, kind, enthusiastic faces ready to greet him and show Michelle every courtesy. You all rock. 

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2013: My Year of Creative Ropes

Quick iPad sketch summing up about how I felt about my creative process in 2013. 

Drawing Ovals and Triangles With Your Host, Calvin

He's currently 2 and half. 

I'm currently very proud.

_________________________

Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Portfolio
Blog
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Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

Regaining That Edge

The eternal debate. After the toddler is good and asleep, do I stay up late and work on contracts? Or get up extra early in the morning? 

Mug design by Glendon Mellow, commissioned by Scicurious

Back when I worked at the art store (before the kid) I would get up around 5a.m. and make art or blog. Then, I'd be thinking about what I had worked on all day and I'd feel good about it. But something happened after being a stay at home dad for almost a year. I've become a night person. An ineffective, exhausted, but can't-get-to-sleep night person. 

So I needed something stronger than coffee to help. Something to help me regain that edge.

That's right: two coffees. 

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Portfolio
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Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

1st Astronaut Hero

Our son Calvin, age 2, watching Commander Hadfield sing Bowie's Space Oddity a few hours before touchdown. 

Calvin tried to sing along about "he puts on his helmet" and "big giant Jupiter in the sky-y-y..."

Snails of Spring

Calvin has been meeting some of the ants and snails in the neighbourhood.

Edit: Here's a fun tweet I received in response to the post!

@flyingtrilobite Nice! Great pics of interesting Cepaea hortensis invaders from Europe.

— BJLS (@BiolJLinnSoc) April 19, 2013

@flyingtrilobite Looking again, they probably C. nemoralis because of dark lips! Also both 5-banded yellow morph; 2nd has all bands fused.

— BJLS (@BiolJLinnSoc) April 20, 2013

Strong Marriage

Gay marriage in Canada has been around about as long as my marriage to Michelle. It has in no way been a detriment to the country. Here's hoping things change in the U.S. and the rest of the world faster than they have so far. 

When we were married, we had a Unitarian minister. I'm an atheist, and my wife's belief system is not up to me to say. It felt strange inviting friends who are part of the LGBT community to our wedding if it wasn't something they could take part in. Unitarian ministers at the time were administering unions to gay couples, so: if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for us. A small gesture (did our family and friends even know? I'm not sure), but we felt it was important. 

Married at Victoria College at the University of Toronto under stained glass depicting Kant(I think?), Newton, Ben Franklin and Columbus. Three wise men and a guy who can't steer a boat. 

Anyway the point of this trip down memory lane is this: our marriage is stronger when it is something all couples can do. Here's hoping for my American friends.
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Portfolio
Blog
Print Shop

Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

A Big Bee

When my son was just over a year old, we'd argue about the flying trilobite tattoo on my arm.

"Can you say, 'tri-lo-bite'?"

"Bee," pointing at my arm.

"It looks like a bee, yes. But it's a trilobite."

"Try clapping out the syllables for him," Michelle, the educator, suggested.

"Okay, Calvin,"(clapping each syllable)"Tri-lo-bite," I enunciated.

Random clapping. "Bee."

Again, clapping each syllable. "Tri-lo-bite". 

An exasperated look for his father, the toddler touched my winged trilobite tattoo, looked me in the eye and said:

"A big bee."

Now he's two, and can say it just fine. After saying it clearly for the first time, holding the fossil above (minus the wings: I found the wings in the years once years ago and snapped the pic - birds had eaten the rest of the poor monarch).

After saying "Trilobite", he laughed, refused to give back the fossil, and a chase scene ensued. 

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

Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

Creative Depression And How I Got Rid of It

When I die one day, my biggest creative regret will likely be all the artwork I didn't have a chance to finish. Headlines marketed at artists and illustrators like "How to Increase Your Creativity" and "Get Your Creative Juices Flowing" never make sense to me.

Ideas aren't the problem. Time to execute them to my satisfaction is. 

Not every idea makes it past the sketch phase. 

So it may seem strange when I say that looking back, I was in a creative depression for much of last year. I was almost locked-up, I could barely act. Everything seemed too difficult: opening the research files, choosing digital or paper sketching, creating process templates, setting up the easel, dealing with my dismantled studio - it was all too much.

I think I know why, now.

I quit my full-time, 10-year, well-paying job managing an art store the day after I found out my wife was pregnant back in 2010. One friend put it, that he, "nods approvingly at the madness of it".  The final few months of my wife's pregnancy had me working from home, getting a steady stream of small revenue but exciting science-art projects. When Calvin was born, it was great, all three of us together. 

I completed this commission, Tylosaurus Reef around the time of my son being born. 

It was the best time of my life (being a dad, being freelance, blogging for freakin' Scientific American is a dream come true) but barely being able to keep up financially was hurting us. Michelle and I have weathered tough times before - we've been married for 9 years - but it was just us. The weight of responsibility for my son to have what he needs was all-encompassing. The cafe job felt professionally like dues I've already paid as a younger man, but ya do what ya gotta do. 

When Michelle went back to teaching, this was the state of things. I worked those 4 part-time jobs while being a full-time stay-at-home dad. Being a freelancing dad was a process I never finished learning how to do.

I painted this small oil on my first day of full-time freelancing. "Freelance Leap". I never did figure out how to fly all the way to those freelancing fairgrounds in the distance. 

The depression really set in for me last fall after my son started daycare. It was the right time for him to go: he loved it almost immediately, running around, learning like an exuberant, friendly and hyper little sponge. 

The new expense of daycare and the empty house/studio brought it all home for me: 

• With the publishing market being where it is, 
• With scientific funding being so small, 
• With science-art as a field barely crawling on the periphery of cultural awareness, 
• With my history growing up with one parent struggling to keep my sisters and I going,
• With my experience going from job-to-job in a steady stream since I was 14 years old, 
• With my amazing wife and amazing son being here in my life, 

I realized something.

I am not cut out for full-time freelancing.

I sent out resumes to a very small number of studios around Toronto that do work I respect and might be good for my fine art/science/social media/management background, and you know what? One of 'em hired me, and it's fantastic. 

My energy is back, I'm excited to go to work (the team there is brilliant, welcoming and fun), and I'm excited to get up at 5 a.m. to blog or sketch again. And we have groceries. 

The fallout is, there are a few people who have commissioned me I owe apologies to for being later than I ever expected. Three of those projects are still in the works and I hope I make them kick-ass and worth the patience that's been given to me.

I lifted the creative depression by starting to become part of a team doing work I believe in, and by bringing my share into the household. Never underestimate the impact that 

• supportive people, 
• new influences and 
• livable income 

can have on your creativity. 

Okay, so it's not all perfect. For example: my face. 

Art is no longer a grind, and in 2013, I think it will be an adventure again. 

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

Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

9 Years

Fossil Gears

One of the highlights during our road trip from Toronto to Halifax was spending a night at atheist-political-sciencey blogger Lousy Canuck's place. Jason and Jodi were kind enough to put our travelling caravan up for the night and introduce us to the wonder of Portal 2. 

To thank @lousycanuck and @pixelsnake for their hospitality, I repainted one of the paintings on slate from my (now-dismantled) final school project into this new work, Fossil Gears. 

The visit was far too short. We need to meet up again some time! 

Flying Trilobite, left, Lousy Canuck, right.

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

Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

Bay of Fundy

Vacation with my family.

On Vacation

On vacation, driving to Halifax. Stopped in Montreal for poutine and then spent the night in River de Loup.

Beetle Week Day 3: Being a Freelancing Dad

Welcome to Day 3 of Beetle Week!

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

Today: Being a Freelancing Dad
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Let's kick this off with another beetle illustration, since much of this post will be about being a working parent. Here's Spectralia gracilpes:

Spectralia, painted in ArtRage Studio Pro. © Glendon Mellow

Since last December when my wife Michelle returned to teaching, my primary job has been to be a full-time dad. At the same time, in no particular order, I do freelance science illustration, not-yet-monetized science-art consultation, sell the occasional print, do social media work for a major retailer, write a blog for Scientific American and work at a cafe.

 This isn't meant to be a whine from a sleepless parent.  Our son Calvin, 18 months old today, is actually doing pretty good right now, usually sleeping through the night or waking up once around 4 am. He's teething, has almost all of his chompers, but his eyeteeth are taking forever. I suspect he has some sort of huge sabretooth-tiger teeth coming in judging from the pain.

When Morgan Jackson commissioned me about this series of jewel beetles, I had hoped to be faster than I was. I'm fortunate that he and his team were patient and had a long timeline. When I used to work full-time as an art store manager, I'd get up at 5 and work at art or blogging for a couple of hours. That proved impossible over some winter months when Calvin really didn't sleep much (he'd be up from say, 1 am to 5 am nightly). Setting an alarm clock was a waste of time.

And over the past several months of being a freelancing-artist dad, I've learned some things I'd like to share. 

• Keep in contact with other dads and moms in the same freelancing boat to retain your sanity. Mainly, I did this through Twitter. And I'd like to send a shout out to Chris Zenga, Eric Orchard, Kalliopi Monoyios, Russell Dickerson, Marc Scheff and Nathaniel Gold who were all there for me with advice and support at odd hours. Go buy all their prints, comics, books and hire them for work. They know how to keep it together.

• Be thankful for your supportive spouse. Michelle really believes in my work, even when times are tough. Be thankful for big contracts.
  
  
• Working digitally is sooooo much easier than working traditionally.  Digitally, you don't have to wash oil off your hands every time you need to take something out of their hands or pick them up.
  
  
• Once your child enters the toddler stage, consider turning your desk around so it's not facing the wall, but facing the room. Then you can see what they're up to when you're stealing a couple of minutes to work.
   
• Never leave your files open and graphic tablet out once they know how to climb a chair.
  
  

  

  Calvin,about 14 months, working on his art table next to my  workstation.

  
  
  
  
• Put an art table next to your workstation. This has worked out well. It's all about mimicry and ain't nuthin' wrong with your kid learning to use a crayon or marker at a young age.
  
  
• Get used to doing things in little bits. No more sitting down for an hour with headphones on listening to rap or metal full of swearing. It's 2 minutes while they're engaged with a snack or enraptured by kicking a ball around the room. Expect to join them to kick that ball.
  
  
• The kid is more fun, more infectious with their sense of fun, than any work you might enjoy. That's my experience anyway. So I felt a lot of guilt when I'd play with my son, watching another self-imposed deadline dissolve like sugar in water.
  
  

  

  Get outside as much as you can. It's good to stretch your legs when you work freelance. 

  
  
  
• Do something that makes money, immediate money. Don't be too proud. You owe it to your family, especially your spouse, not add to the aggregate stress more than you have to. While I've been a full-time dad, I've also gotten a part-time job at a cafe, because money became too tight and this was a way to get a small but regular injection of money into the household.
  
  
• Don't forget to stop and recognize what you're achieving. This is where one friend (thank you Eric!) really hammered it home for me. Between working at the cafe, making freelance art, selling prints, writing for Scientific American, and doing some paid social media work for a retailer, I estimate I've been bringing in about half my old full-time job's salary per month. While being a full-time dad. Maybe it's not always enough to keep us comfortable, but I still need to be proud of that.
• If you get an evening or a whole day to yourself, get some fucking work done. Don't play video games. Don't browse Netflix. Just get started, then make coffee and keep working.
  
  

  

  The rough little sketch I used for the Spectralia painting near the top. Looks like a squashed banana peel. 

  
  
• Before we had Calvin and when I still was working at a full-time job, I'd get up around 5 am and blog or make art. That way, my day would start off doing what I love to do and then I'd go off to work in good cheer. I'm still striving to get back to that schedule as a dad, and friends tell me it gets easier as the kids get older. 

• Every day when I get up, all groggy and I'm tempted to surf around online with my phone, I ask myself: "do I want to be a content-creator or content-consumer?" It's cheesy, but that phrase rings in my head louder than an alarm clock. 

Already in the time that has passed since I finished tweaking and uploading publishable files for Morgan Jackson, the stress of getting the job done while raising a sleepless vampire child is fading, and I'm left with a happy, healthy active kid who has a dad proud of artwork he'll be able to one day share with his son.

Who knows?  Maybe one day we'll find one of these beetles when we're out camping!

Those are my little pearls of wisdom. Any other freelancer parents have any more?

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Beetle Week continues tomorrow!

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 TrachysDay 5: The Exhibit

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Portfolio
Blog
Print ShopFind me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

Cleaning fossils.

Calvin, about 18 months, cleaning fossils.

Almost used this sketch

Recently, over on Symbiartic, I posted a piece ruminating about copyright and the utility of good scientific illustration, called Dinosaur Couture Should Be Open To All. I hesitated putting the post up, since although tangential, I thought some sort of illustration riffing on dinosaurs and high fashion would enhance the post. 

Squeezing in time to make any sort of artwork is next to impossible the past couple of weeks: our son is teething, not sleeping well and I'm very behind my self-imposed deadlines. So I spent some time and tried to work on the sketch above, thinking maybe a model with some sort of fossil couture outfit could be fun. The face is pretty flawed, I didn't use an actual model. Perhaps I was thinking of Eva, from America's Next Top Model season 3?

Ultimately not happy with it, I decided instead to attempt a breezy fashion design sketch, using watercolours in ArtRage. 

C'mon, the hipster pants and shoulder pads on the right not doin' it for ya?

I was scrambling to complete it before posting and heading out the door...in the end, I erased the two dinos on the sides, and went with the parasaurolophus in the spring dress. 

Ok. Not my best work. But I hope a splash of colour livened up the post. 

I feel hopeful about getting some sort of studio and blogging schedule back on track soon. We're going to try some new things with Calvin's sleep schedule to allow him to be more rested, and in turn, me more rested. I love being a stay at home dad and freelancer: it's a balancing act that's tipped a bit askew, that's all. 

I'll leave this post with a fanciful parasaurolophus I'm more proud of. 

Check out Dinosaur Couture Should Be Open To All on Symbiartic! 

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

Portfolio

Blog

Print Shop 

Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the new Scientific American Blog Network!

Important details

Came across a link with my name on it. 

Last year, I was pretty excited to start blogging at Scientific American. Around the same time, my university's alumni newsletter had sent an email asking for stories and entries, "where are they now" kind of features. Unlike many of my peers (and most people in post-secondary education) I'm actually still directly using a lot of the skills from my degree, though more for illustration than the fine art gallery-scene. 

So I sent in a little blurb about blogging for Scientific American. 

I didn't realize they actually published something. Here's the entry.  

It reads, 

Mellow, Glendon (BFA Spec. Hons. Winters) is a graduate of York's Fine Arts Visual Arts studio program. He married Michelle Follett, a primary teacher for the TDSB, and they recently had their first child, Calvin. He is a speaker on the intersection of arts and science on several radio programs. 

Well yeah.  That's all true and a matter of public record. And being married to Michelle and having Calvin are two of the most amazing things in my life, certainly things I'm proud of. 

I dunno though, I sort of thought this was a newsletter for catching up with professional accomplishments? I guess it's like Facebook-old school. 

(And radio programs, but they left out podcasts?)

For those of you who love baby pictures, here's our little dynamo working at his art station, about 15 months old. 

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

--> Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the new Scientific American Blog Network!

Teetering and Tottering Toward Epic Awesomeness

Busy, busy, crash.

2012 started off with a computer suffering from so many problems I'm exhausted enough to skip completely over what exactly happened, except to say a hearty thank you to my good friend Rudi for getting things humming again.

Means I'm in catch-up mode, teetering and tottering between equally important projects with looming deadlines and images I can't show you until I'm done, thus the repeat of our man Trilobite Boy up there.

So what am I working on?

-Mainly, being a stay-at home dad, for realz. Our son just turned 1 shortly after Krismas.  He's practicing walking, talking is ever more specific and complicated, and he's really really adept at saying, "No, Dada" in a world-weary way that lets others know how much he puts up with.  He's amazing every single day, and my wife is the main reason.

-I do so freelance social media promotion for a big Canadian retailer when he naps.  Was doing some from my iPhone during the crashed computer days.

-For Symbiartic, the art+science blog on Scientific American, there are a ton of half-complete interviews and posts and feelers sent out. Lots to come there, some artists and discussions I've wanted to have since before launch. There's no shortage of material to cover, and I'm hoping to get some more, shorter, "gee whiz looks at this image" posts up to go along with the usual discussions that get started. I'm lucky to be writing alongside my co-blogger Kalliopi Monoyios, mainly because her posts continue to surprise me. The whole network at Scientific American is pretty amazing, and I have a ton of new-favourite bloggers now, not least of which is Alex Wild's Compound Eye.

-ScienceOnline2012 is coming up fast, and I'll be involved in 2 discussions and I'm co-curating the science-art show. More on that over the next few days in some new posts. (Yes we've decided what we be in the show! Everyone should receive emails by Monday morning.)

-In addition, I'm plugging away having a merry time working on my first actual scientific illustration (not surreal, no arthropod-human hybrids or winged sealife).  Can't wait to share.

So what's on the launchpad for The Flying Trilobite?

-March 2012 will be The Flying Trilobite's 5th blogiversary online, and I plan to mark it with a Bold! New! Direction! for Trilobite Boy and some regularity to the artwork that fizzled out with my short-lived webcomic last year.  I made some progress over the non-computer days on that front, and I'm excited about where's it's going to go. Should I reveal it?

Spoiler-->  The plan is one comic book cover a month, painted, showing Trilobite Boy's  adventures.  Or at least teasing at them. And there will be some *ahem* hidden things. Can't say any more than that.

-Hopefully I'll be able to do another contest for the 5th Blogiversary celebrations as well.

-I'm also planning on more tutorials using oil paint and ArtRage in the coming months, to share how I do what I do.

-Sales in my online store were up a bit in 2011 from 2010, and I'm hoping to get them up higher with some of the projects I have planned this year. Calendars collections still available, and you can choose the start month!

Thanks to everyone who visited and commented on The Flying Trilobite last year - I'm hoping 2012 will be full of epic awesomeness and world trilobite domination.

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

--> Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the new Scientific American Blog Network!

Movember's End

The itchy 'stache is gone. 

My thanks to Christian & Sheilagh, Sherry and Charles, Joe and Patricia, and Shereen and Lex for their contributions to my Movember campaign on the Crusty and Dusty team. Thanks for helping me support men's health by messing with my face. 

And now what you wanted to know you didn't know you didn't want: some photos of me hamming it up for Movember. 

Week 1: 

Week 2:

You're not looking at my moustache. You're looking at the baby.

Week 4:

Ah, Instagram. Coupla more years, and this is gonna be like lens flare
and we'll all think these faux-retro photos look stupid. My moustache is however, magnificent.

...aaaaand, back to the cowboy hat. 

Thanks everyone!  Especially my long-suffering wife Michelle. 

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

--> Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the new Scientific American Blog Network!