Thursday 3 January 2008

A Few Glimpses from The Flying Trilobite 2007

Click on the titles for the entry from this year, or click on the images to see the whole artwork. A few pieces from the past year, no particular order. Life As a Trilobite was my most viewed and favourited in my DeviantArt.com gallery, and Disease was the least. For my blog entry posts, the two on life drawing from September are the most popular, probably since they are the least niche of my work and the easiest to search for.





In a few days I will post some glimpses of upcoming work for 2008.

18 comments:

traumador said...

Pretty pictures...

I've always thought critters from the Palaeozoic would make good sci-fi monsters... That human trilobite hybrid proves it! It looks awesome dude!!!

Now if only Steven Spielberg would hire me instead of my cousin for his next movie. Get some Opibina's and Anomalocarises in space...

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks Traumador! Wow, what timing. I was still editing when you put in your comment!

Since all the kids love Michael Bay now, maybe you could land a part in the next Transformers flick? You'd be a lot more comfortable than your cousin pretending to be a Dinobot, I think.

Can your cousin even spell, "Grimlock"?

traumador said...

that would be awesome!

i'm going to get started on my costume. just need to find some aluminum and duck tape...

Peter Bond said...

I stumbled onto The Flying Trilobite through Traum's Blog and I am really digging it!

Amazing art, man. I am a science/teacher and a kinda-artist and I enjoy your style.

One question: I am tempted to put my own art online, and I am worried about the copyrights and such. How do you protect your paintings online? How did you watermark your pics?

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks for the compliments, Bond! Is that pencil drawing of a tyrannosaur on Bond's Blog one of yours?

Copyrights are a funny thing. I worried about it a long time before taking the plunge last March.

By international law, you automatically retain all copyrights on your artwork even if you don't specify that.

Another thing you can do, which I have off the side of my blog, and on each piece in my deviantart gallery, is use a Creative Commons Licence. There are a few different ones, and apparently they will stand up in court. Mine basicaly says anyone is free to copy and distribute my art but I must always be credited and they are not allowed to alter it in any way. That's the most restrictive Creative Commons licence. They're free, and you find a lot of them online.

My work isn't actually watermarked at this point. I probably should be doing it, but it can obscure the work a fair bit. By putting my name in the corner, I could be victim to someone cropping it in photoshop and claiming it as their own. By putting a large faded watermark over the whole center of each image, I could better protect (and obscure) the work. This is useful since Google Imagesearch does not remind anyone about copyrights nearly well enough. A lot of non-artsy folks out there assume if they can find it through a Google Imagesearch, it must be like royalty-free clipart.

Of course there are other ways. Become famous enough fast enough that there is an outcry when you are plagiarized. Retain attack lawyers like Leslie Hawes or the team behind Girl Genius. And remember, if you work in traditional media, like I do, you always have the originals to back up a claim.

For myself, if I am on the Dawkins forum or Pharyngula or somewhere and artwork is shown without citing the artist, I try to call some attention to it. (Pharyngula is actually pretty good about it). It's only fair to the artist. Whew.

That was a long answer, sorry. Perhaps I should post this whole topic, then we'd get some responses from a few other artists out there.

Leslie Hawes said...

I am really liking The Forever Painting!
And the Asthma Incubus makes me want to sleep sitting up, with my eyes open, doing breathing exercises :)
For Bond: There is a great "How To" on the Lines and Colors blog about art on the internet. In the left hand sidebar are two topics about how to, and how not to display your art on the web.
http://www.linesandcolors.com/
And it really is an amazingly small world wide web when someone 'steals' art and doesn't give you credit. Somebody always tells... :)

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks Leslie! I'll have to check Lines & Colors out too. I kind of went into it all blind and have been learning as I go.

And thanks for the comment about The Forever Painting. I've thought about posting it in pieces since it is quite large and has lots of little things happening in it. Hmm.

Peter Bond said...

Thanks for the incredible answer, Glendon. And yes, I sketched the skull (it's the design for the tattoo on my shoulder).

Thanks also to Leslie, for the heads-up about the Lines and Colors Blog. It's really great and the article about how and how not to post art is very useful!

Oh, my favorite of your paintings is Life as a Trilobite. It's creepy and haunting, but really cool!

Glendon Mellow said...

That's gonna be a great tattoo. Make sure to post photos.

Is it a portrait of Traumador? It looks like it has his cheekbones.

Thanks - Life As a Trilobite is one I'm very proud of.

Glendon Mellow said...

Make sure to check out Leslie's blog too, as well as her main site for her artwork. Beautiful and engaging commentary from her commuity of friends and artists.

Lines & Colors is really good. Leslie, you are a natural teacher; and you know your resources!

Peter Bond said...

The tattoo isn't meant to be Traumador, but he is a tyrannosaur and so is my tattoo...

I got the tattoo last July. Pictures of my first Tattoo Experience are here:

http://petersaurus.blogspot.com/2007/06/tattoo-pics.html

Leslie's blog looks interesting also!

Glendon Mellow said...

The tattoo looks great. By the way, I placed your blog with the artists on my blogroll...maybe you'll shift to science later. I dunno. Dang pigeonhole categories.

Leslie has a great sense of empathy and her step-by-step artwork posts make it look easy.

Peter Bond said...

Honestly, to be put with such amazing artists as James Guerney, is an honour. Thanks for adding me! (I don't have quite enough links to require categories yet!)

Good luck in the new year with the new pieces. Do you recommend deviantArt as a place to upload art?

Thanks again!

Glendon Mellow said...

DeviantArt is great. The way the galleries are set up it encourages a lot of artist chatter, sort of a proto-Facebook set-up. So I've met and communicate with some very talented people there.

Another good site is Flickr. I don't have an account yet myself, but I'm seriously considering it. Recently, Blogger added a widget so you can take your photos from Flickr and make a slideshow on your blog.

The main thing stopping me is maintaining yet another site.

Anonymous said...

Dang.
There has been a Leslie lovefest over here while my hard drive was dead! That's just wrong.
My artist's mind is saying things like 'crimson', 'scarlet', 'madder lake' for the color I am blushing. Shucks fellas.

Glendon Mellow said...

Is your hard drive better now? Oh wait - don't answer that.

I'm partial to the quinacradone reds, myself.

Anonymous said...

Quinacradone was a totally new word for me, so I went poking around, and found this!!!
http://www.tadspurgeon.com/
I am going to post about this guy in the next few days. What an incredible site. The philosophy, the techniques. Really explore this one. It's RICH source for painters.

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks for the tip Leslie. I'll have to take a look.

One thing that has always vexed me is when paint companies trademark a new name for a difficult-to-pronounce colour. Like "Acra" Red for Quinacradone Red by Liquitex. Or "Winsor" Blue for Pthalo Blue by Winsor & Newton.

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Posts over 14 days old have their comments held in moderation - I've been getting an unusual amount of spam for a guy who paints trilobites. I'll release it lickety-split though.

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