Art Monday: Flying Trilobite Tattoo

The design: The tattoo:

Originally posted here, and submitted to Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium, where all the kewlest tattoos go. I got it for my birthday in 2008.

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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 ***

Hint: there's another tattoo design being posted later today!
But who was the design for?

Art Monday: what's this all about?

While I was at ScienceOnline2010, I was lucky enough to get in another fascinating conversation with Roger Harris. At one point, Roger was telling me about how he had explained the flying trilobites to someone, and I was riveted. It was an explanation I hadn't heard before, not far from my thoughts, but taken in a much more socially relevant direction (there aren't a lot of people more socially relevant than Roger, I suspect).

So what's this all about?

Why would I spend that last 14 years populating my drawings and paintings with trilobites with wings? Lend the concept to my blog's title and theme for the last (almost) 3 years?
What do you think these weird drawings mean to me, enough that I would actually get one tattooed on my left forearm?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and interpretations.

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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 ***

Geology in Art by Andrea Baucon

Paleontologist, geologist and artist, Andrea Baucon has a deep interest in trace fossils, the little marks made by the passing of extinct organisms. Fittingly, he has put together a book tracing geology's path through the arts.
Geology in Art: an unorthodox path from visual arts to music is a large coffee-table of a book, covering the imagery and influence of that natural earth upon which we stand in music, paintings, fiction and even wine.

From the book's site:

"The contemporary art world is analyzed through interviews, in the belief that artists’ opinions and statements are valid source materials for the study of Geologic Art.
With its large format and more than 100 illustrations of art works, this is both a coffee-table book and an educational experience that informs, inspires and entertains Art and Geology enthusiasts alike."

Months ago, Andrea emailed me to ask if he could interview me and include some of my images in the book. I agreed, and I have seen the earlier incarnation as a more scholarly .pdf document. This blows it away. What a wonderfully rich book. I feel honoured to be in the same collection as Andy Goldsworthy and Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics and so many others.

You can preview the entire book on Blurb. My contribution includes an interview along with a photo of my tattoo, both configurations of Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle and in the fiction section, Life As a Trilobite.

(Thanks to my paleo-art peep Peter Bond for posting the news on Art Evolved!)
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

new Flying Trilobite Fossil tattoo pic

Here's a new picture my wife took of my flying trilobite fossil tattoo, all healed up.

Please ignore that I'm being hurled backwards and wearing sunglasses indoors.

...That was a good day.

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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.

Flying Trilobite Fossil Tattoo

In my last post, I alluded to a mysterious image of the Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil.

The image I designed would not be completed by me. Instead it was completed by the talented and professional Andre of Pick Your Poison Custom Tattoos.

So yeah, I'm serious about my art and concepts. Now to submit it to Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium...

Edit: The trilobite is an elrathia kingii, very similar to the one on the trilobite ring my wife gave me some years ago. The bat wings were taken directly from the Flying Trilobite painted shale in the possession of my good friend Rudi L, which can also be seen in this interview with Virginia Hughes at Page 3.14 from last year.

Elrathia represents to me the archetypal trilobite. Not too many fancy spines or other evolutionary power-ups, it is a common trilobite, and often found made into jewellery. They are usually only an inch or two across, and never had wings. All trilobites were aquatic.

One of the main things I love about art is to produce unreal visions based on the enormous wealth of knowledge no other generation had access to. I believe to do less is a disservice to the times we live in, and how much we know about the times that came before, and the universe at large.

Okay, I think I'm coming off the tat' endorphins now.
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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: A Mysterious Sigil

What could this be?

I will be showing a finished version of this piece on Wednesday, I think. The thing is, I will not be completing the final art, and yet I may still submit it to another popular site, to see if it will be featured there. Hopefully it won't be mistaken for a skeletal frog too often.

It's been over a decade of artwork about mythical flying trilobites and their fossilized remains. It's only fitting....

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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.

The Flying Trilobite Business Card

The winner!

Thank you so much to all those who helped this one along. In my previous post, I asked and received tons of help deciding between two new business cards.

The image on the winner is Photoshop adapted from an ink drawing I have done. The image is meant to be for a (non-winged) tattoo I will likely get in the spring when this blog is one year old.

9 people preferred the first card, 2 the second. I myself preferred the second choice as well. As Lim Leng Hiong of Fresh Brainz called it, it has "extreme quirkiness". I will likely still use this image somewhere, and tweak it some more. Chadmac pointed out that its centre of mass is misplaced, so I'll need to fix that.

But I am very happy with card #1, and it does have my core image. As Leslie Hawes and Rudi pointed out, it needs to be a card that shows off the art. The wings are popular for this artistic ancient aquatic arthropod, as Dale McGowan, Lauren, Traumador the Tyrannosaur, Gastrolith, and Luna_the_Cat and Shelley Batts all agree.

For the final version depicted above, I tweaked a couple of things based on some reader's suggestions. Lauren suggested I shrink the trilobite image slightly, and I think that works well. As Leslie had pointed out, I could also have blown the image up to make it more abstracted. I think shrinking it works a little better, as some people have no idea what a trilobite is, let alone a Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil. Lim Leng Hiong thought it might work better to have more contact between the trilobite and its wings, so I added some crumbly bits to make a better connection between the disparate parts.

I'd like to thank everyone who gave me an opinion, both online and offline, especially my wife, Michelle who watched me seesaw back and forth. Shelley of Retrospectacle also pointed out a business card service that she highly recommends, Moo, so I will probably look into that. This whole process really helped me out. I started this blog to promote my artwork, and also to get feedback on my work. Sometimes an artist is throwing so much into the process, it is easy to become myopic about how well the final image works.

My gratitude to each of you.

(Edit: whoops! Earlier today, the card I uploaded had an older version of the text layout on the card. All fixey-fixey now. No more blogging without the morning coffee. )

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!