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: business card tweaks

A 3"x2.5" piece of cardstock is supposed to be my standard bearer when introducing people in realspace to my online identity and artwork.

Earlier this month, I began tweaking this important piece of identification. I hope I may ask for some opinions? Things that look great on the computer screen may not look as nice on paper. My favourite has more drawbacks than the others.

a. Classic look.

b. X-ray look.

c. Pop look.

Which is most "me"? Or do I say who cares, which one stands out the most?

The reverse of each of these will simply list the urls for my blog and hub, online gallery, email, and reproduction store. Hmm. Should I add my Facebook page link?

I'm finishing the end of the year indecisive. Decisive will wait for 2009.

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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 Calendars available now!

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!

Art Monday: loosening up

Painting is still a learning process, or as I refer to it, a struggle. It's rare that I produce a piece I am 100% okay with. Going back and forth on the amount of realism I want to inject into my work is a part of the struggle. The small oil sketch above is a light in the tunnel for me, or perhaps a point-change mutation with beneficial traits being expressed, if you prefer.

This piece, Callimorphia dominula, was created for a colleague as a Secret Santa gift. (The recipient is extremely talented, and though I don't often refer to folks at my day-job, keeping the two worlds separate, you can see Ash's paintings here.) Since her name is Ash, I painted leaves from an ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior), and a Scarlet Tiger Moth - - or is it one of the faerie-like Meliae?

The mutation for me was in the attempt to create a thickly-painted -one might say slathered- background, and a realistic foreground.

The background here on the left is obscured, partly because I put the still-very-wet painting onto my scanner, and it left shadows of the sticky paint when it scanned. What you're missing there is largely off-white, with a hint of blue-green.

In the coming months, I hope to get a number of paintings developed, and this little sketch feels like I've uncovered a small but vital technique that breaks a block I've had for a while.


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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: hadrosaur sketching at the museum

Some museum sketching pics from November, taken at the Royal Ontario Museum.

My nephew and I sketching a Corythosaurus skull he found interesting. He's part of the Explorer's Club there, and received a nice treasure for all the visits this year.
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Comparing my Gryposaurus incurvimanus drawing to the original. I like the interesting reflections of the new Crystal architecture on the glass in this shot.
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The Gryposaurus skull drawing is also featured as one of the dozen months of 2009 in my 1st-ever calendar, on sale for about 23 bucks. And there's still time to get it for the New Year.- -
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.

Darwin on a pink tee!

In time for the festive Newtonmas to Darwin Day season, there's new items in The Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop! Personally, I'm giving some for Krismas.
The popular Darwin Took Steps image is now available in colour on American Apparel shirts. As before, a portion of the purchase of my Darwin-tees will go toward supporting The Beagle Project, so you wear a surreal image of the controversial biologist-adventurer with pride.

Darwin Took Steps shirts are available in a wide range of colours, as well as four styles of shirt. Just click the t-shirt button and take a look at the choices.
Sweat-shop free, and starting at $23.94 U.S.! RedBubble accepts Australian, U.K., American and Canadian currencies too.
This year I have also put together a calender, a first for me. If you're a fan of my artwork, or surreal scientific illustration, this is the best way to pick up a dozen prints of my work in one place. Here's a some shots of the calender, $22.99 U.S.:

Hmm. I'm kind of digging that white background. Maybe a re-design in the New Year? You can also visit the RedBubble-hosted store and click through to see every month.

Order soon to guarantee it in for Christmas and New Year's!

I've also added cards, prints and canvas-reproductions of my popular Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle in each configuration!

With such a dizzying array of holidays coming up, give the gift of Flying Trilobite.

(Product shots from RedBubble! Thanks RedBubble, you're super-keen!)

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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.

My favourite museum.

My submission for The Boneyard #26 over at Traumador the Tyrannosaur: The Royal Ontario Museum.

I love the ornate, classic entrance with its detailed relief.

I love the looming new Crystal, crashing into the old building.
The pachycephalosaur intimidates me and enthralls me, lit from below with a purple light.

I love to go there and draw prehistoric skulls, and interact with extinct creatures that never imagined me - and wonder what in the future I am not imagining.

Gordo is wickedcool. You can't take in his whole skeleton in a glance in the space. I love that children and adults can see him from the street.

I'm disappointed no one got my oreodont joke last year: "an early mammal, the oreodont, and it looks like some predator only licked out the soft middle and left the cookie parts intact".

The museum brings out the child in me.

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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: tangling some blue

Last week I was tagged by Mike of Tangled Up In Blue Guy with a blogging meme. So can I out-blue the Blue Guy?

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random arbitrary things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Keeping a blue theme in mind, I'm going to change the rules a bit. I'll talk about my associations with colour, and things I often teach about pigments. Here we go.

Phthalocyanine Blue: Throughout university, this blue appealed to me. It has a green undertone which made it feel dirtier and more like a blue you'd encounter in a mysterious forest. Painting pale flesh tones was daunting early on, so I'd paint them in blue tones. Gradually I warmed up to greens with naples yellow, and then red with naples yellow. But blue was a safe place to start, so far removed from human pigment.

French Ultramarine: I'm going to say this out loud on the internet, and it's a scandal. I'm more nervous about admitting this to Mike than announcing to the world I'm an atheist. I hope we will still be friends. Mike's blog is named Tangled Up in Blue Guy after a song by Bob Dylan. I can't stand Bob Dylan. Oh, I'm not ashamed of this. Bob Dylan drives me nuts. No redeeming value to his music to my ears. This shouldn't be a surprise with what I've mentioned about music in the past. Mike, do I still have a free pass to comment on your blog? Or has it been revoked?

Mauve (blue shade): The Symbolist era of painting in the "Mauve 1890's" is the era I feel the strongest affinity to, though it is almost the antithesis of what I paint. Much of the fin-de-siecle angst was about harkening back to an earlier period of art, literature and myth. Fear of modernisation and industrialisation drive much of the subjects of art at this time. The Impressionist movement was largely ignored by artists I see as heroes, such as Redon, Deville, Moreau, and (my favourite) Khnopff. Instead they painted Salome with the head of John the Baptist, sphinxes and chimaeras, tombs and beautiful Mannerist-style bodies. I love the Symbolist aesthetic, but I am an artist in awe of science when it comes to my subject matter.

Indanthrene Blue: When walking my dog in a wooded park, sometimes we'd stop and I'd lie on my black and stare up at a deep blue autumn sky. And just try to absorb all - that - blue. Beautiful scattered light blue.

Cobalt Rose: Cobalt is an expensive, mildly toxic, strong tinting, long-lasting (we're talking centuries) blue pigment. And it reminds me of Dungeons & Dragons. In D&D, there are a type of goblin called kobolds. And the pigment is named after them, for the difficulty of mining it and for its poisonous nature.

Cerulean Blue: Go to an art gallery, and take a look at the religious paintings. (Go ahead, you can be an atheist and think they're beautiful, it's fine. Think of the talented humans who created them and be in awe.) You may notice that the virgin Mary is often wearing bright blue. No doubt some twisty theological logic may explain this. There's also a simpler economic reason.

Blues described as 'caeruleum' were quite expensive in medieval and Renaissance times. A patron would send the artist to the apothecary to purchase a certain amount of expensive pigments to pridefully show-off their piety. Who to paint in expensive colours? The most important person in the painting would be Jesus Christ. But he was mainly depicted as an infant or semi-nude in crucifixtion scenes.

So the expensive paint would adorn Jesus's mother, Mary. So you know. Praise blue.

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Time to meme-tag. I tag Bond's Blog, Of Two Minds, Laelaps, The Darkened Face of Heaven, Eastern Blot, and The Evilutionary Biologist.

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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.

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.

Your favourite museum?

Boneyard 26 will be hosted by Traumador the Tyrannosaur! Never participated in a blog carnival before? Curious? It's easy. There's usually an overall theme to the carnival. In the case of the Boneyard it focuses on fossils and palaontology.

Sometimes, the specific edition of the carnival will focus on a certain theme, and for Boneyard 26, Traumador is asking people to write a post about their favourite museum.

Write up a fantastic post about the museum you haunt, and alert contact Traumador by email or comment on this post!

- - 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.

Vote for art in awe of science!

The Flying Trilobite is nominated in The Canadian Blog Awards! You can find my blog listed in the Photo-Art category.
Vote for some art in awe of science! First round of voting ends November 29th, so click that tiny circle. You know you love clicking tiny circles. You knooow it.

(And don't forget to vote for Traumador the Tyrannosaur in the Best Canadian Sci-Tech category!)
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You can also nominate past posts from The Flying Trilobite for inclusion in OpenLab08, the best of science blogging on the web!

The competition accepts cartoons, so just specify if you are nominating my whole post or just my artwork. Simply use this form to nominate a past post!

And hurry! Nominations close November 30th! You lurve filling out online forms, right?
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If you need a reminder of Flying Trilobite art & science goodies, may I direct you to the art links in my sidebar? You can click on oil paint, pencil drawings, or even paintings on shale. Remember, items in my gallery only count if you nominate the blog post they appeared in.

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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.

Art Monday: Gryposaurus skull sketch

Went to the Royal Ontario Museum last Friday, and spent some time with the museum's original dinosaur skeleton, Gryposaurus incurvimanus.

Sketching in a public space is always an interesting activity. I throw on my iPod to draw only if I'm on a secluded bench outdoors. Otherwise, you can miss the comments from curious passers-by.

I was asked if I was a student, or there with my art class, about 4 or 5 times. I'll take that as a compliment that I look younger than I am! Kids are funny, they are so-o-o curious about what you're doing, but inherently polite enough to hover until they're invited to have a look. Some young guys told me they like to draw and think dinosaurs are interesting too: I hope they're inspired. It's nice to chat with parents, teachers and students on trips about why I'm there.

I think the reason I'm there is mainly because it's relaxing and challenging to try and accurately draw an animal skull or fossil.

Drawing in public is one of those times an artist can receive immediate feedback. Thanks to my fellow visitors for the encouragement. My one wish is that the museum's hours were a little different. The only night they're open later than 5:30pm is Fridays, which is a tough night to commit to drawing every week.

The gryposaurus was the R.O.M.'s first fossil dinosaur, collected in 1918 from Drumheller Alberta, and installed in 1920. A nice, big, honkin' duckbill. I was standing kind of close, looking up at it, so the drawing is not entirely a side-view. I spent more time on it than I had for some of the other images I've drawn from the R.O.M., and I'm mostly happy with the proportions.

Here's some other fossil skull sketches from my gallery. I've thought about offering prints in my repro shop...perhaps in the new year.

Hmm. Which fossil in the R.O.M. should I tackle next?

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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.

Albino Squirrels (plural!) of Trinity-Bellwoods

While walking in Trinity-Bellwoods Park a couple of weeks ago, Michelle and I saw two of the albino squirrels!

Yesterday, I managed to snap a photo of them both together before one raced out of frame up a tree. The other is on the ground in the far right of the photo. Click to enlarge.

One seems a little bigger than the other.

Excellent. Perhaps by next winter there will be a whole colony. (What's the group-name for squirrels? Herd? Clutch? Brace?)

You can see other posts about the albino squirrels of Trinity-Bellwoods here.

- - 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.

When blog-memes attack!

Jumpin' junebugs!

I've been blog-meme swarmed. Time to pay what's due and give some back. Beware, Flying Trilobite Blogrollers!
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The Me Meme
A surprise meme, inflicted upon me by Zach of When Pigs Fly Returns. Ha! I scoff at this one. Here are the rules:
1. Take a picture of yourself right now.

2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.

3. Post that picture with NO editing.

4. Post these instructions with your picture.

My camera was broken when Zach sneak-memed me. So my wife has snapped this surprise photo of me to make up for it.

Time to inflict more poorly coiffed surprise snaps on the populace. I tag Traumador, Emile, & Chris Zenga.
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The 5 Things Meme
Peter Bond of Bond's Blog is gettin' personal.
5 things I was doing 10 years ago:
1. Dating the girl who eventually married me
2. Sitting on a transparent blue inflatable couch
3. Living with a blue-fronted Amazon parrot roommate who loved cartoons
4. Lots of gothy clubbing
5. Sporting black-light sensitive dyed hair

5 things on my to do list today:
1. Work on commissioned artwork
2. Conduct interviews at my job
3. Spike my hair up
4. Admire my wife
5. Read SEED article with Craig Venter

5 snacks I love:
1. Listerine pocket packs
2. Espresso, properly run long into an Americano
3. Multigrain Tostitos & salsa
4. Apples, except for those vile 'red delicious' ones. Ew.
5. Raisin bran muffins

5 things I would do if I was a millionaire:
1. Donate buckets of cash to The Beagle Project
2. Start a campaign to outlaw 'red delicious' apples
3. Go back to school, take something in biology
4. Find time to paint more often
5. Never hear the words "student loan" again

5 places I've lived:
1. Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (until I was 6)
2. Beach area, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
3. St Mike's Hospital for a few days, Toronto
4. In an apartment with a dance major and a theatre major, Toronto
5. In the Little Italy/Portugal/Brazil area, Toronto.

5 jobs I've had:
1. Clown handing out flyers
2. American Sign Language Interpreter
3. Coffee shop barista
4. Art supply store manager
5. Freelance illustrator

5 people I'll tag: Stephanie, Mike, Kris, Mo, & Sean.
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6 Random Things Meme
A new contact has tossed this meme at me: I've been clobbered by The Darwin Report.
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1. My heritage includes Irish, Jamaican, Panamanian, English & Dutch.
2. In high school I wrote an illustrated book about vampires and it won an award.
3. I'm learning to love spiders. Small ones.
4. At one point, I considered seriously changing my first name to "Hyper".
5. If the bulkhead doors on an underwater oil rig are slamming shut due to flooding, I'll be saved by the metal of my wedding ring. (anyone guess what it's made of?)
6. I plan on ignoring rules 5 & 6 on this meme.
For the 6 Random Things meme, I tag Chris Zenga, Geoff, Craig, Thrawn, Humblewoodcutter, & Heather.
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Whew! Glad that's over. I guess now I'll need to start selling that photo in my online shop.

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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: Grandmother's favourite

This drawing was always my grandmother's favourite piece of my artwork. I drew this back in the early days of university after I had largely stopped drawing vampires and faeries, and as my interest in science had started coming back to the fore. I called it "Beetleman", though I'm not really sure why.

My grandmother loved this one, and I gave her a reproduction of it. I miss my grandparents, and I'll always appreciate how they encouraged me in my artwork. My grandmother would challenge me about what I was trying to do, and pester me with questions, until she'd laugh at my answer once it was clear. My grandfather would not have much commentary about the subjects, instead asking about the media used, and supplying us with astonishing amounts of paper when my sisters and I were small.

Good times.

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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.

ScienceOnline'09 - thoughts on two cultures

In January, I will be co-moderating with Jessica Palmer on a couple of sessions at ScienceOnline'09.

Here are the first thoughts I published to the wiki for Art + Science: online and offline:

A big topic, so I’ll start where I’m familiar. Science opens up new territories for visual language and metaphor.

Using scientific discoveries, diagrams, principles and images to increase the visual language in art. This is something I strive to do with each piece. When taking history of western art 101, I recall being amazed at the idea that the general public of the Renaissance would have understood the significance of an orange on the table in a portrait. Or that much of Michaelangelo’s work was an attempt to portray platonic ideal forms.

Exploring the same sort of method for my work has led me in attempts to personify ‘extinction’ and ‘mitochondrial eve’ as beings rather than concepts, or Haldane’s precambrian rabbit quote as a puzzle. I regularly depict my wife in paintings and drawings holding diatoms, because they are beautiful, delicate, and (thinking of photosynthesis here) essential to life. An example outside of my own work would be Dali’s Christus Hypercubus (scroll down), or Jessica’s Aposematism. The golden ratio gave us this stunning cover composition in Imagine FX recently. In pop culture, I marvel at Davy Jones’ crew in the Pirates of the Caribbean series as monsters difficult to present to a public unaccustomed to detailed images of nature. I could go on.

The reverse is what’s difficult for me to see: how does science benefit from art? From viewing it, and resolving a problem or…?

Is art a parasite on science, except when used as illustration? Many naturalists are painters as well.

Seed magazine’s article by Jonah Lehrer in issue 13 was interesting. So was this Cocktail Party Physics post.

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Here are some more up-to-date thoughts I've been pondering lately, and I will update to the wiki. I think this is a better synopsis for where my head has been.
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The relationship between the cultures of art and science: does art act as a parasite on science? The benefits of scientific findings to the inspiration of art have numerous examples. Popular culture at large may benefit from art inspired by science. But does science ever benefit from art, other than illustration? Can art inspire science?

Good art usually is connected by metaphor and symbolic representations to its subject matter. Metaphor and symbols are by their very nature, imprecise descriptions of the world. Science, on the other hand strives for accuracy and precision. Is art only capable of being a metaphor for a small aspect of a single phenomena, and not the whole?

How does art inspired by, say, palaeontology differ from art inspired by physics? Will an illustration of a Mesozoic landscape always be inherently more precise than a sculpture inspired by quantum phenomena?

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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.