Sunday 31 July 2011

Trilobite Boy Mail!

Back in June a number of Flying Trilobite readers really helped me out with donations to keep my portfolio site at glendonmellow.com going. For a minimum $10 donation, I made each of them an original drawing. All of those drawings should be arriving in everyone's snail-mailboxes over the next several days.  

Here's science-artist Katy Ann Chalmers with her Trilobite Boy Chibi



My grateful thanks to each person who donated or tweeted to get the word out.  It's been a tough time freelancing for me, and it really helped keep my presence alive online. I had fun with each image, and did things a little differently than the norm. I made a nice scan of each one, and will put them all up in a future post together.

As an artist, it can be really tough to earn a living wage from your work without years of royalties and a large committed fanbase.  It takes time. I'm lucky to be doing well for a guy who paints trilobites with wings. But we're also living in a time when the divide between how images are prized and what people will pay for them faces a huge divide.

Artists forge ahead and use the talents to delight and inspire, and the growing movement of science-artists have a doubly important mission, turning people on to the natural world through their skills and dedication.

There's another science-artist who needs financial help right now, and is willing to put their skills to the task:  Katy Ann Chalmers, pictured above, is offering an amazing deal on original artwork if people can chip in and help her afford to go back to school this year: check it out!  Cephalopods and space art for a great cause!
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.

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New!  Follow me on Symbiartic, the new art+science blog on Scientific American! 

Monday 25 July 2011

Cloak and Dagger wip

Decided late last night to get cracking on another Marvel Comics image for fun.  Below, the start of my work-in-progress of Cloak and Dagger, being done with ArtRage Studio Pro.



I've always liked these two, ever since their half-book run in Strange Tales opposite Dr. Strange.  Artist Bret Blevins' take on the pair defines them for me, though I loved Kevin Nowlan's covers. This series introduced the sinister Mr. Jip (and also had the best Dr. Strange stories ever, after he destroyed all the ancient talismans that protect Earth in order to save his friends. He becomes super evil to save the world.)


Art by Carl Potts and Bret Blevins

Dagger is a teen dancer, and should be lithe, but it often portrayed in a really voluptuous way which I don't think fits this character. Her costume is revealing, but also carries a really simple design that would work well even without all the skin showing. Cloak's skin is supposed to appear sort of like old wood, so I'll see what I can do in this image to grant that effect, though most will be in shadow. 

For this image, I wanted to have more mystery, and an air of menace. We'll see how it turns out. 

Here's some previous sketches I posted a couple of years back:




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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Cloak & Dagger © Marvel Comics, fanart being done without permission.

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Saturday 23 July 2011

Pseudoscientific illustration, smacking cameras and flying gnomes: New on Symbiartic


There's been a bunch of new posts on Symbiartic since Kalliopi Monoyios and I debuted our art+science blog on the new Scientific American blog network. Here's a rundown, plus a bonus gnome at the end. 


Visual Beings: Meet Symbiartic by Kalliopi Monoyios - say hello to us both!  Introduce yourself!

Science-art: Don't call it "Art"
by Glendon Mellow - Where I lay in some ground rules about the silly generalization of the word "art". Now with fully repaired interactive image, touring some of the hotspots of science-based and science-inspired art.  Oh, also it totally links to some of those crazy fractal people. Seriously, fractal artists are whack.  
(And see if you can find the Autobot.)

5 Reasons Your Camera Won't Steal My Job by Kalliopi Monoyios. Kalliopi lays a smackdown on photography and states why illustration is supreme. My favourite reason?  Dinosaurs. 

The Dudley Bug
by Glendon Mellow. How long did you think it would take before trilobites crawled onto Symbiartic?  :-)  An unusual coat-of-arms.


Magic Beans
by Glendon Mellow. How does a scientific illustrator reconcile themselves with doing pseudoscience?  Is it just for the money?  What about fiction?  Does it hurt their work?  I explore all this and more, and included a new illustration in the style of 19th Century naturalists depicting the traits of magic beans. 


A Naturalist's Study of Magic Beans by Glendon Mellow. Under Creative Commons Licence;
feel free to share and remember to attribute; no derivative; no commercial. Done using ArtRage Studio Pro.

I'm really hoping more Flying Trilobite fans will head over to Symbiartic and comment!  I love the reception we've been getting about Symbiartic on my Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and here at the blog.  Please take a moment to let us know how we're doing on the new network as well.

And because I know you will comment because you're all rad and stuff, I'm prepared to give you this short film of the magic bean pollinating-gnome being created as a bonus.



And you can follow Symbiartic on Twitter!


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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.Portfolio

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Sunday 17 July 2011

Trapping the Man-Thing


Trapping the Man-Thing. ArtRage Studio Pro, 2011.


Complete, at least for now. I've had a lot of fun dipping in and out of this painting in odd moments, but I think I'm calling it complete. See here for lots of work-in-progress posts on this Marvel Comics character.


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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.
Man-Thing copyright to Marvel Comics. Fan art, without permission--> Respect their authoratay!

Tuesday 12 July 2011

Snowy Man-Thing wip


Decided to play around with this one some more and switch the crystals at the base to snow.  Still a work in progress: I'll need to add some more frostiness to ol' Man-Thing.

Does he need a carrot nose?  Nah.

I'm really enjoying ArtRage Studio Pro, and I've been using this image to unwind whenever I have some time. Also, if you're an ArtRage fan, check out the updates that come with 3.5: now their's scripting!  Basically, you can record a movie while you paint. I plan on making use of that pretty soon!

Previous looks at this work-in-progress here.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.
Man-Thing copyright to Marvel Comics. Fan art, without permission> Respect their authoratay!

Thursday 7 July 2011

My Scientific American blog debut





My first post on Scientific American is now live!

Please head over and check out Science-Art: don't call it "Art" - complete with an interactive image!



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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.

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Tuesday 5 July 2011

Big. Giant. News.

Symbiartic by Glendon Mellow with helpful art direction by Kalliopi Monoyios.


The new Scientific American blog network has launched this morning!  And I'm on it!

Head over and say welcome to Symbiartic!
I'll be co-blogging with scientific illustrator Kalliopi Monoyios about art + science, scientific illustration, copyright issues, how new media change art, data visualization, science cartoons, comics, architecture, photography, fine art and much more. You may remember Kalliopi Monoyios from the blog An Eye for Science, sometimes featured on my Scumble posts. She was also the illustrator for the books Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin and Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

I'm completely thrilled Kalliopi is joining me on this blog, she's tremendous fun and it's been a real collaboration while we worked on getting this ready behind the scenes. Read our introduction post, Visual Beings: Meet Symbiartic.

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So what does this mean for The Flying Trilobite? A few changes. The Scumble science-art posts I use to highlight artists and artwork from the Science Artists Feed will be moving over to Symbiartic. There's so much good work out there, I like to try and highlight what I can, even if it's not a longer form blog post and analysis or interview.

The Flying Trilobite will still be the primary showcase for my own work, and work in progress, personal commentary and so on. Symbiartic will be myself as a fine artist and Kalliopi as a scientific illustrator (and both of us as geeks) discussing mainly other people's work, unless one of us has an event we want to post there.

Basically, The Flying Trilobite is all about me, and Symbiartic is all about the science-art movement and community.

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And wait until you see what other blogs are on the new Scientific American blog network!

Head over to blog community editor Bora Zivkovic's welcome on The Network Central.

And thanks to all my Flying Trilobite readers and art-fans!
Check out Symbiartic

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.


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Monday 4 July 2011

Contest banner at Science3.0





Mark Hahnel of Science 3.0 asked if he could use one of my dinosaur drawings for a contest banner on their network - I said sure!  My artwork is under a Creative Commons Licence that says it can be freely shared so long as no money is involved, it's not altered and I get credit. In this case it needed to be altered - but Mark asked, and hey, that's what the licence is supposed to encourage. This has been your copyright service announcement for the day.

Here's the Oviraptorosaur skull incorporated into the contest banner.

I drew this handsome fella a couple of years back at the Royal Ontario Museum.

More importantly, check out the contest!  



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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.

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Sunday 3 July 2011

Religion in Science Education

© Glendon Mellow - glendonmellow.com. Under CCL.


Available as a card, print, framed print or poster in my online store.

Originally done for a PZ Myers - CFI event here in Toronto a few years back.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.

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Saturday 2 July 2011

Screencast: making a charcoal preset in ArtRage



My first screencast demo, using Screenr. Thanks to Rudi for suggesting Screenr, and thanks to German for asking to see an example of my charcoal preset.

Maybe I'll do more of these. Don't forget to click +1 below if you like it!


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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Glendon Mellow. All rights reserved. See Creative Commons Licence above in the sidebar for details.
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