Art Evolved gallery sneak peek

The newest Art Evolved time capsule gallery launches today! The theme is palaeo-environments. Here's a sketch of the painting I made for it, done in ArtRage totally digitally. Convincing pencil, eh?It's called Mountain Discovery. Click-y to enlarge-y.

Go to Art Evolved to see the finished piece, fully digital, created using ArtRage with a few last-minute Photoshop tweaks.

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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: here's an ugly fellow

A detail from my in-progress Asthma Incubus II, painted entirely digitally using ArtRage 2.5 and my Intuos 3 tablet.

Hmm. I need to fix the eyelashes a bit. I like them long and pretty on this ugly face though.

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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 ***

ScienceOnline2010 - Digital Tablet intro

This year at ScienceOnline2010, I'll be doing a workshop about using a digital tablet. You can follow along in this series by clicking on the label, scio10tablet, below.

Most of my work is done in analog oil paint, but increasingly I am using a tablet to tweak, fix and outright paint my work. It's a fun tool, really intuitive, and I think children and adults can benefit from their use.

So what are they? Graphic tablets (aka digital tablets) are essentially a touch sensitive surface that plugs into a USB port. It usually has a few buttons you can use as hot-keys, meaning you can assign functions to them (like "undo"). The surface doesn't respond to your fingers, like an iPod Touch or iPhone - it responds to a spooky mouse and spookier pen. I say they're spooky because neither one has batteries or plugs into anything. (Click to enlarge photo) The postcard size grey rectangle on the tablet is the sensitive area, and it maps straight to your screen, even if the aspect ratio is different.

After spending months drooling over tablets er, doing research, I finally bought one in the spring. There are a lot of brands out there, and I really favour Wacom. I have a last-gen (bought in the waning days) Intuos 3. It has 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity, and can sense the angle of the pen. After loading the drivers, it works with something like 80 programs. (Wacom has recently put out the Intuos 4, which doubles the sensitivity, has more buttons, and comes pre-loaded with da Vinci's brain.)

The touch-sensitive surface used with the pen can do extraordinary things. Using the image program Photoshop Elements 6, here are some lines using a traditional mouse. I used the pencil setting, 100% opacity, black:

Using Photoshop Elements again, here are some similar lines using a tablet. Can you spot the difference?

Using the mouse, the lines have a consistent thickness. Using the tablet, the thickness varies. Let's try the same thing using a translucent pale colour over top of a darker colour. I'm using a digital painting program called ArtRage 2.5 this time. (For those who are interested, I'm using the oil paint setting, thinners set to 75% to increase translucency.)
Mouse:Tablet:

You can see the pressure-sensitive tablet varied not only the thickness of the line, but the opacity of the colour. Hm. It's really noticeable comparing both sides of the circle. Two words: Neat. O.

Next tutorial, I think we'll add some more colours and play with some programs using layers. Any questions? Requests? Let me know!

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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 ***

Foundation Beyond Belief

In 2009, an important new charity has been born. Foundation Beyond Belief was created to inspire atheists and secular humanists to have a new place to help. To help education, the environment and reason.

Foundation Beyond Belief's mission:
To demonstrate humanism at its best by supporting efforts to improve this world and this life; to challenge humanists to embody the highest principles of humanism, including mutual care and responsibility; and to help and encourage humanist parents to raise confident children with open minds and compassionate hearts.

Open minds and compassionate hearts = awesome.

I came to identify as an atheist reluctantly; the appeal of an afterlife is really strong to me. Perhaps that's something I share with many artists of the past, a hope for a type of near-immortality after death. However much I wish something to be true, it doesn't change what is true. It's rare that I discuss my beliefs plainly and directly on this blog, choosing to show my understanding of the world through science and some paintings dealing with atheism.

One of the founders of Foundation Beyond Belief is Dale McGowan. I worked on a blog banner for Dale in 2008, but I was a fan of his witty, insightful writing about child-raising and communication before that (which helped make the work such a treat!). His book, Parenting Beyond Belief taught me a lot about different ways to raise a freethinking happy child. I trust Dale, and can't wait to see what the Foundation is going to be able to do with support.

Here is some more about Foundation Beyond Belief, and please check out their website.

• Foundation Beyond Belief is a non-profit charitable and educational foundation created (1) to focus, encourage and demonstrate the generosity and compassion of atheists and humanists, and (2) to provide a comprehensive education and support program for nontheistic parents.

• The Foundation will feature ten charitable organizations per quarter.

• Members join by signing up for a monthly automatic donation in the amount of their choice, and distribute it however they wish among the categories. Contributions are fully tax-deductible.

• Members can join a social network and forums centered on the ten categories of giving, advocate for causes, and help us choose new beneficiaries each quarter.

• Featured beneficiaries may be founded on any worldview so long as they do not proselytize. At the end of each quarter, 100 percent of the donations are forwarded and a new slate of beneficiaries selected.

• On the educational side, the Foundation will help create and fund local groups for the education and social support of humanist/atheist parents.

Happy New Year everyone!
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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 ***

ScienceOnline2010: Art & Science - metaphors

part 1 can be found here, discussing metaphors with one thin slice of an example that is also rich and filling. To follow this series of posts, click the "scio10art" label below. (I will also be doing a workshop about digital painting with a tablet - for more on that, look for posts labelled with "scio10tablet".)

At the upcoming ScienceOnline2010 in January, I will be on hand again to lead a session discussing art & science, this time working alongside Felice Frankel. As last year, here are some of the subjects for this year's session in advance, so whether or not you will be attending you can take part in this discussion. I don't presume to speak for Felice here, although after a fun phone call a few weeks ago, I think it's safe to say we'll be leading the discussion and not heatedly debating.

It is important to recognize at the outset that categorizing artwork under a few banners will never fully satisfy. Even placing them along a spectrum, one type fading into another related type is inadequate, as art can contain imagery and meaning from any point in a spectrum.

But I'm gonna do it anyway. I think it helps to have some kind of a map to guide our discussion, while recognizing a different map would lead to different treasures. Let us also begin with the assumption that metaphors abound in science as well as in art, presumably because we humans find new and strange things easier to grasp when we relate them to things we already know.

Breezing past these issues, here are a few types of metaphor that appear in scientific imagery. (At Felice's suggestion, I'll often use the word imagery in place of art - it opens up the field.)

1) Data visualization metaphors- Graphs & charts. Medical & scientific illustration. Literal metaphors with a specific intent of clarifying information about real world phenomena. Last year, attendee Ryan Somma of Ideonexus blogged that "operating systems are basically a collection of metaphors for all the inner mechanical and electronic workings".

At left, a diagram of a representative triglyceride found in linseed oil (by Smokefoot, public domain). Not how it would appear to the naked eye, but a useful language of chemical metaphors is used to help visualize relationships.

At left, an image of cool objects past Pluto (by Lexicon, under GNU licence). Here, what does the positioning of the plutoids tell us? What metaphorical relationship is revealing a truth, and what is erroneous in favour of the metaphor?




2) Narrative & allegorical metaphors - Illustration. Image representing ideas. (my own artwork falls here). Often traditional materials are used in a Renaissance or children's book style.

At left, The Young Family, a cautionary metaphor by Patricia Piccinini, with a sort of bioengineering, uncanny valley, Frankensteinish motif.



Migrations, a blog banner (by me) commissioned for Dan Rhoads science blog, Migrations.



3) Abstracted science metaphors - Using data-gathering tools but divorced from immediately applicable data. Inspirational and provocative. Abstracted from science imagery. Image for image's sake (perhaps technique is the message, a la MacLuhan?) Much of Felice's work falls here, in my opinion.

Ferrofluid, a drop of ferro-fluid being affected by magnets, on a glass side with a yellow Post-It underneath. Copyright Felice Frankel.









The Cone, by Andy Goldsworthy, (left) an environmental and found object artist.









At what point does the artistic nature of a metaphor take over, creating an art object that is no longer scientifically useful in representing data? This question came up during SciBarCamp here in Toronto last May when an interesting disagreement came up between an artist and a biomedical simulator, and has been explored by Jessica Palmer at Bioephemera as well. We've all watched a metaphor run away with itself - this is neither good nor bad, but certainly useful in a different way than a specific metaphor describing single phenomena.

There may kind of be a 4th category as well, though I do not know if we will deal with it in session.

4) Metaphors that mislead - here I'm thinking about things like the overly mechanical illustrations by creationists to help them explain the faulty irreducible complexity arguments of eyes and bacterial flagellum. Medical illustration illuminates certain features while omitting others for the sake of clarification, but I suspect so-called intelligent design illustrations omit and highlight in a fictional way to lead viewers to erroneous conclusions.

I'd love to hear other people's examples of images in these categories (or examples that disrupt them!) in the comments below!


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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: secular swag

In 2008, I was commissioned by author Dale McGowan to create a blog banner for his blog, The Meming of Life.


Dale is a superb writer about raising children to be well-rounded, happy, moral people without religion - or perhaps I should say with a plethora of religious teachings and stories, and the faculties to think through them on their own. Dale has penned and edited two books on the subject: Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers.

The image was well-received, and I'm still very pleased with it. I enjoyed Dale's enthusiasm for the child's auroch, the little funky blue guy in the corner. And available now...


...secular swag!

Check out the line of hoodies, mugs and magnets that help support this wonderful atheist-parenting and rational freethinking blog. Flying Trilobite approved!


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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 ***