Darwin meets Blue Guy

The oil painting I produced for The Eloquent Atheist, entitled Darwin Took Steps, has found another champion today, in the form of Mike H. of the prolific Tangled Up in Blue Guy blog.

You can see the Tangled Up in Blue Guy post about Darwin Took Steps here.

And hey- he's also pointed at the banner that I produced for Of Two Minds! Any chance you're moonlighting as a scientific illustration talent scout, Mike? Perhaps if I need an agent one day...

With both of these pieces being worked on throughout February, it's been a busy month. Thanks Mike, for the comments. Feedback on my artwork is always welcome. (Thrown vegetables or muttering "derivative" are less welcome, but interesting.) In addition to the link in my gallery, you can also see my popular pencil drawing, or read the 'making of' post.

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By the way, this Friday will mark one year since The Flying Trilobite began. Look for a misty-eyed reminisce-a-thon on Friday. And cake! Maybe pie!

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(Edit: March 8 2008: Darwin Took Steps also featured on The Dispersal of Darwin ! )

Blog Banner Art for Of Two Minds

Today is the launch of Shelley Batts, Steve Higgins and Pepper's new ScienceBlog, titled Of Two Minds. Last year, Shelley asked me to make a new blog banner on her old site, Retrospectacle, which you can see the steps I took in drawing and painting it, here.

These two have some crazy fun reporting about science, neuroscience, parrots, things being poked in the brain, and superheroes. Ya gotta check it out.

I am sharing blog banner duties with Len of Monster By Mail, so you may see two different ones at the moment. Click the 'refresh' button, and the page will reload and show the other banner. I contributed the one with the tragedy & comedy masks, for which I originally used Shelley and Steve's faces as a starting point. Squint your eyes all up, you'll see it.

Shelley and Steve have also made a neat little banner tab on their top bar, so you can see the previous banners they had on Retrospectacle and OmniBrain, including my 'valkyrie' banner. (Shelley is actually using my original thumbnail sketch for that banner as a tiny avatar when she posts. It was so rough and hasty, I am alternately cringing and proud by turns.) You can also see why Shelley suggested this particular font; once the final stages of the banner came together (and I sent some continuous tweaks and fiddles to it late into the night) Shelley suggested we use Blackadder ITC.

Above is a shot of the banner, and you can see it in my gallery; but it really looks much better over at Of Two Minds, so please head on over and read about x-ray vision, a pain index, and magnetic people.

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I am available for commissions to do blog elements as well as portraiture, concept design, surreal paintings and scientific illustrations. After perusing The Flying Trilobite Gallery, please contact me, Glendon Mellow, by email if you are interested.

Horribly, terribly vain review of myself by me!

Full disclosure: I signed my blog up over at blogged.com, and then proceeded to review The Flying Trilobite myself. O, wo unto desolation...the vanity, the vanity!

It could be argued that blogs themselves are a form of vanity. Some may say that artists are also a vain lot, wanting to leave a (misunderstood, unfathomable, derivative) mark on the world as they pass through it. These things are probably true, and in no excuse me writing a review of myself.

Let's take this vanity farther. Here is the review in it's entirety. (For some strange reason, you cannot read the whole thing at blogged.com...it just kind of cuts off at the end even though it let me keep typing. Perhaps this is punishment for vainglorious fools. Hmm.)
And so here we go:

Review of myself March 1st 2008 for
blogged.com
by Glendon Mellow, authour of The Flying
Trilobite

I have impeccable spelling, I look great in pinstripe
suits, and I make paintings that often feature trilobites with wings.

Well, if i humbly say so myself, I like to make sure I don't blog
for the sake of blogging, but wait until I have something interesting to
contribute.

I am giving myself very high marks. I believe in
representational painting, the beauty of expanding our symbolic language in art
by incorporating the wealth of knowledge that science provides. I believe in
giving science the exaltation as a way of knowing that it deserves above the
outmoded supernatural that has dominated much of art history.

And
I am leaving myself room to improve, because as an artist I am never satisfied
with my skills as a whole, only elated at my moments of brilliance and triumphs
of rigour.

Thank you for viewing my artwork at The Flying
Trilobite. I look forward to more illustration contracts, visits, comments and
reviews.
-Glendon Mellow

8.5/10 because my best work is ahead
of me.

Can I possibly throw my own ego around like a bigheaded pompous artiste any more than I have?

Oh - oh - I know -
I'll put up a picture of myself! Yeah, handsome devil, check it!

What the - Who....? That's not the pinstripe-suited pic of me with Manhattan in my grasp!

(edit: what was I thinking when I posted this? Too little coffee...)

Getting out there

In my last post, I included the making of a new painting, called Darwin Took Steps. I had offered to share this artwork with the editors of The Eloquent Atheist, in part to reach a broader audience than The Flying Trilobite's alone.

The subject matter was intended to be a part of Darwin Day, and so I registered at the organizers' site along with the other participants. It's always fun to see your name on the same list as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.

I tried to promote the piece on Facebook, changed my profile picture to one of the sketches, and made comments on the walls of a few groups, pointing the way to The Eloquent Atheist to aid in traffic there. Hopefully they'll have me back again some time.

By the end of the day on February twelfth, my Darwin painting had been re-posted on two other websites - in Spain! It was done without my direct permission, but it was done respecting the Creative Commons licence: in this case, it was cited as being a painting by me, it was not altered, and no one was profiting by it. I was and still am pretty excited!

On first site, the painting was posted by one of the DeviantArt contributors I have corresponded with, who goes by the name of Koolasuchus. In case you're not familiar with the "suchus" part, it is Latin for crocodile, and Koolasuchus often includes drawings of these in their DeviantArt gallery.

With the second site, It turns out that Koolasuchus also is a regular contributor to an aggregate site, also in Spanish, called Evolucionarios. The site looks great. Unfortunately the only other language I am fluent in is ASL, with a smattering of French from my Canadian upbringing.

So, Darwin Took Steps did what I set out for it to do; it put me out there. My thanks to all those parties who liked the piece, commented, re-posted it or checked it out! Next year is the two hundredth anniversary of Darwin's birth, so I'll have to start cooking up something grand to go alongside this year's painting.

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If you've read this far in such a self-indulgent post, allow me to tease you with another piece I am working on that should be up soon. Normally, I feel it is bad form to mention a piece of art for a contract until it is completed and approved. However, since Shelley Batts' confirmed it over at A Blog Around the Clock already, I figure it's cool.


I am almost finished a piece for Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle and Steve Higgins of Omnibrain. These two neuroscience students and ScienceBloggers have teamed up to create a new blog, to be called Of Two Minds, and launching March 1st. I will be doing one of the rotating banners again, and I'm pretty psyched.

It's a good start to 2008; two more painting contacts for others. And March 7th will be my one year blogiversary, so you know I'm cooking up a special illustration to mark the day that the flying trilobite army burst onto the scene!

Making of "Darwin Took Steps"

For Darwin Day 2008, I decided to work on a surreal portrait of Charles Darwin, which is to be published today at the online literary 'zine, The Eloquent Atheist. There should be some writing accompanying it from one of the Darwin Day organisers, Dick Renfro. (Edit! Here's the link!) I always enjoy seeing another artist's process in creating a work, and I have found some scientists who read this blog are also interested in seeing the greasy nuts & bolts that go into a painting.

I am not a biologist, but I am something of a biology/palaeontology groupie. Darwin's work is so important not only for explaining a process of evolution by natural selection, but also for how it exploded the traditional chain of mythologies humans lived with as explanations for so long. The modern Bright movement and sites like The Eloquent Atheist seek to show how a life without religion and the supernatural can be intellectually and emotionally fulfilling.

In my continuous struggle to improve my own madartskillz I am also trying to create works reminiscent of Symbolist and Surrealist masterpieces replete with symbols drawn from our modern scientific worldview. Why use Odin to symbolise wisdom when you can paint Darwin?

Making of Darwin Took Steps

1. Thumbnail sketches
These were just thumbnails, showing an elderly Darwin pondering what to write next. The one near the top right has a "tangled bank" of branches floating above his head. From the start I knew I wanted to depict Darwin in his later years, as it is a more generally recognised image. I discarded both of these ideas in favour of the staircase idea.

2. Beginning the drawing.

For the drawing, I drew upon a reference from National Geographic's November 2004 issue. (Cover title: "Was Darwin Wrong?". The answer inside, almost a page tall: "NO.") One of the goals for this painting was to see how quickly I could do it, and still be proud at the end. In this instance I gave up drawing freehand and used a projector to create the sketch above, which is something I rarely do. That took 20 minutes. Refining a drawing that size without the projector can take another 2 to 3 hours. Materials: 2mm pencil on vellum-finish bristol paper. (Must perform life drawing for three hours in penance for using the projector...)

3. Staircase and a false start.

The staircase is an older idea of mine I used on a piece called Disease. It was developed as a cd cover and never published. I like the image though, and thought it would be appropriate. The column in the background is supposed to suggest the path leading unexpectedly to D.N.A, beyond Darwin's scope. I checked the drawing in a mirror a lot, to see if there were any gross abnormalities that stood out. Noticed a staircase coming out of his head. During this phase, I was listening to Jakalope in my studio, which is actually a freakishly large closet off our living room.

4. Completed drawing.

This is the drawing as complete as I decided to make it for painting. I used a .3mm mechanical pencil, HB lead on vellum-finish bristol. Love that Strathmore. In total, the drawing itself took about 3.5 hours. I jettisoned the d.n.a. column idea, and left the staircase leading up and away, the edifice not yet finished. I had fun with the little 'chi' lines in the beard. After tweaking the contrast in Photoshop, I printed the drawing out onto a couple of sheets of canvas paper from my laser printer to paint on.

5. Prepping for 'speed-painting'.
I decided to work in our living room, claiming the coffee table as my territory. I use Turpenoid Natural rather than other solvents. It smells of pine and is not full of nasty toxic hydrocarbons like most odourless solvents. The pliers are to get my oil tubes open. (Seriously, are all tubes made by people who've never had to open them more than twice? The caps are all different by brand, but they all get stuck.) I wanted this piece to have an older, sepia-feel to it, so linseed oil rather than a paler poppy or walnut was just fine. I am armed with Bavarian Dutch Chocolate coffee in my Jack Skellington mug.

My palette consisted of Naples Yellow (which I am addicted to), Quinacradone Orange, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Monochrome Tint Warm, Burnt Sienna (which I hate), Raw Umber, Payne's Grey, Zinc+Titanium White and Lamp Black. A lot of people swear you shouldn't use white or black (and you should mix your own from blue and brown), and I say, stop living in the Impressionist Era! It's so over! Lamp black is warm and deep, like pvc goth-gear in a tube.

I set the timer to stop me every hour. My aim was to finish the painting in 3 hours.

6. Results after 1 hour.

Usually I start with the eyes. I worked out the face, mainly with a cad-yellow underlayer. Monochrome tint and white for highlights. I was listening to Darude, The Chemical Brothers, and a Nine Inch Nails remix album. The faster the beats, the fresher my brush strokes. This is deep in the Ugly Phase , where I just hate how it looks. No time to fret; hour two!

7. Results after 2 hours.

Started using a phylogenetic tree in the background, painting with quinacradone orange underneath, and iridescent gold oil paint on top. Renaissance masters usually painted a red basecoat under gold leafing to add luster. I am using some micron brushes my wife put in my stocking at Christmas. They are really tiny synthetic brushes, and the filbert is now my bf4evr. Some artists say oils must be painted with rough hog's bristle brushes, and then I just yell, stop living in the Impressionist Era! Old master used soft brushes for detail, and so do I.
It's not done. I need to move toward hour 3.

8. Results after 3 hours, colour corrected.
The final piece, colour-corrected in Photoshop.

I fretted about how dark it looked on some monitors, and after submitting the image to editor Michael W. Jones at The Eloquent Atheist, emailed a second colour-corrected version, seen above.

Complete! ( edit: Here is the full-colour-corrected image and how it appears in my online reproduction store, a portion of the profits going in support of The Beagle Project.)

Assigning a number to any amount of steps would be arbitrary, but I chose 5 for a reason. Four for the support of evolution by natural selection (Darwin drew upon examples of 1. biogeography, 2. morphology, 3. embryology, and 4. palaeontology), and the fifth step for natural selection itself, or the elevation of reason over dogma, as the viewer likes. The steps of learning never end.

Please check this out on The Eloquent Atheist today, and leave comments! Constructive feedback is always welcome. I will edit this post later today to provide the link once it is up. Merry Darwin 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. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

Merry Darwin Day!

Sometime today my Darwin portrait, Darwin Took Steps, will be posted on The Eloquent Atheist! I will update this post and add the painting to my deviantArt gallery later on. I'm pretty excited to have another piece featured in The Eloquent Atheist.

If you haven't stopped in to that online 'zine, you really should. Make sure it's during a time of day you have to spend just idly reading. Great poems, essays and prose to be found. And the occasional piece of art from freethinkers.

Also today, sometime before noon eastern standard, I will post a "making of" post of Darwin Took Steps. Why not see the evolution of a painting today as well? Okay, okay, it's really development, not evolution. I suppose it's good ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny when it comes to art. I'd start out in crayon, move my way through finger paint, awkward comic book figures with too many muscles, out of proportion life drawings, then to sunken oil paintings, and finally Darwin would just pop out.

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Other Darwin Day happenings:

-Go to the offical organiser's site, Darwin Day!

-A nice round-up (kid friendly, too!) at The Free Range Academy!

-Can't miss the wild and woolly folks at The Beagle Project!

-Pharyngula should be talking about evo-devo sometime today.

-Carl Buell's 2006 Darwin Day illustration is a classic: check it out on Olduvai George's Flickr site!

-There's always stuff going on at Richard Dawkins' site. Check out the cards!

I'm sure a lot of the science blogs in my blogroll will be involved. Please feel free to post a link to your own art/writing/Darwin Day happening on my comment thread. I'll update this with the link to The Eloquent Atheist as it comes up.