Field Guide to the Jewel Beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) of Northeastern North America

Cover photo of Buprestis rufipes by Ted MacRae

Buprestis striata field guide page showing colour variations.

Sample key to genera page. All characters used in the key are illustrated with either high magnification photographs or simple illustrations.

Trachys generic page from Field Guide to Jewel Beetles featuring original artwork by scientific illustrator/artist Glendon Mellow.

(*All above image captions by Morgan Jackson.) 
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Last summer, I had Beetle Week here on The Flying Trilobite, to show a series of Ontario jewel beetle paintings I was commissioned to illustrate by entomologist and insect photographer Morgan Jackson, blogger at Biodiversity in Focus. 

The book is now available - including limited copies for FREE, and its a beauty!

I'm so thrilled my illustrations get to share the same pages as photos from Ted McCrae, Morgan Jackson, and many others.

My thanks to Morgan and his co-authors, Stephen M Paiero, Adam Jewiss-Gaines, Troy Kimoto, Bruce D Gill, and Stephen A Marshall.

For another look at the book, and details on getting a copy, check out Morgan's announcement post at Biodiversity in Focus. Make sure to read how this book came about, and learn about the changing beetle landscape.

You can also find merchy-merch on sale in my online store  with the illustrations I created - greeting cards, framed prints, iPhone cases, tees, 2013 calendar and more.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
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Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

New poll - choose my own adventure

There's a new poll at right below.  My freelance career will be beginning in the next several weeks, so I've opened up a poll to get a sense of what some readers of The Flying Trilobite may be interested in.  It's anonymous, and you can choose multiple answers.

My kind of dream-project at the moment is to have a picture book with my paintings complemented by some SF stories by various writers (thanks for the support, Brian!).  I know there are many venues where I could self-publish a beautiful book like this - one Facebook fan has already admonished me and said I should be considering an agent and mainstream publishing (thanks L!).

 What do you think?








[Edit:  the Blogger sidebar poll wasn't working, so I've replaced it with this one by PollDaddy. Please respond again if you tried to a first time.]

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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Trilobites abound.

Cool.  
The book that featured me is featuring me on the blog of the book.  (If you read that, you must now say it 5 times really fast. )

Check out the Geology in Art blog by artist-scientist Andrea Baucon for commentary about my artwork, and many other excellent paleo-artists including my Art Evolved peep Peter Bond.

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If you've already visited Art Evolved's Trilobite Gallery, go again!  More artwork has popped out of the deep internet strata, or from some sort of fossil-ly metaphor, and it's awesome stuff, worth checking out.

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Are a lot of my reader's Capricorns?  Seems to be a lot asking for the Trilobite Astrology image for that one!  

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

CultureLab: Where books, arts and science collide, one of the blogs by New Scientist magazine has a feature about some guy who paint trilobites incorrectly - get this - with wings.

After my panel talk at the Centre for Inquiry a few weeks ago, science writer Dan Falk and I found a hallway and I answered some questions.

The article is titled: Trilobites: Glendon Mellow's Muse.

Thanks Dan!


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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 ***

The Open Laboratory 2009!

The Open Laboratory 2009 is here!
Great fun working with series editor Bora Zivkovic again, and with edition-editor Scicurious and this year's technical renaissance-man, Blake Stacey. Good times. Thanks to Dave Ng for the stunning design - we riffed off of last year's and changed the cover colour, much like the first two editions' covers by Reed Cartwright.

Can't wait to read it.

Maybe I'll put up some of the slightly different background iterations in the next few days.

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

And buy that book up there. You can totally judge this book by its cover, trust me, it is that excellent.

Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

New Going Pro about copyright

I've posted another edition of Going Pro over at Art Evolved. This time looking at different kinds of copyright that are useful for artists to think about.

Click here to check it out. I promise Lego.


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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 ***

A dotcom: boom!

I'm pleased to announce that glendonmellow.com is now live.




There shouldn't be too many bugs left, mainly I still have more artwork to upload. I'm going back and forth on the lead image, above. Should it have the text, or not?

After registering my domain with GoDaddy and deciding on deviantArt's new portfolio for my site template, the rest was fairly simple. There are not a lot of customizable choices on dA's portfolios, but I like the clean look.

What is it for? Well, time and again, I've read that art editors and directors prefer not to wade through the irrelevant-to-their-needs-stuff that makes a blog a blog, or deviantART, deviantArt. I wanted clean and simple, and something that aesthetically fits with both the blog and with my print shop. I've been blogging on The Flying Trilobite since March 2007, and it has been wonderful so far - no plans to stop!

2009 has been a busy year. I've had a number of commissions, art & interviews published in traditional print 7 times, any number of links & blog citations, a podcast interview and a reproduction is currently hanging in a Spanish museum. I'd love to eventually be busy enough to work on art & illustration as a source of income part-time (or full-time, dare to dream). I am hoping having a simple, glendonmellowdotcom will make this year even busier.


Let me know what you think of the dotcom!


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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
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Geology in Art by Andrea Baucon

Paleontologist, geologist and artist, Andrea Baucon has a deep interest in trace fossils, the little marks made by the passing of extinct organisms. Fittingly, he has put together a book tracing geology's path through the arts.
Geology in Art: an unorthodox path from visual arts to music is a large coffee-table of a book, covering the imagery and influence of that natural earth upon which we stand in music, paintings, fiction and even wine.

From the book's site:

"The contemporary art world is analyzed through interviews, in the belief that artists’ opinions and statements are valid source materials for the study of Geologic Art.
With its large format and more than 100 illustrations of art works, this is both a coffee-table book and an educational experience that informs, inspires and entertains Art and Geology enthusiasts alike."

Months ago, Andrea emailed me to ask if he could interview me and include some of my images in the book. I agreed, and I have seen the earlier incarnation as a more scholarly .pdf document. This blows it away. What a wonderfully rich book. I feel honoured to be in the same collection as Andy Goldsworthy and Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics and so many others.

You can preview the entire book on Blurb. My contribution includes an interview along with a photo of my tattoo, both configurations of Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle and in the fiction section, Life As a Trilobite.

(Thanks to my paleo-art peep Peter Bond for posting the news on Art Evolved!)
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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 ***

EARTH magazine article now online

In case you prefer pixels to print, the article about the Art Evolved crew is now online!

It features an interview about Art Evolved and why Craig Dylke and Peter Bond decided to start an ope paleo-art blog and community. The online version Includes the images from the print article in a rotating slideshow.

The article is here.
Art Evolved is here.
Me gushing about the who thing is here.

Thanks again to Carolyn Gramling, and the editors who made our images look so stunning. They really pop on paper.

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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 ***

Published in EARTH Magazine!

In the September 2009 issue of EARTH Magazine, you can find a two-page profile of Art Evolved by Carolyn Gramling.


There is artwork by myself, Zach Miller, and Art Evolved founders Craig Dylke and Peter Bond. There's a nice interview with Craig and Peter as well. That's our headline there on the cover: Paleo-artists get creative.

My Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil III (that makes up the current banner above) gets over a third of page 65 - seeing my own images in publication never gets old. Finding a feature article in the 7-11 in my Toronto neighbourhood is awesome. Being in there with online friends and artists I respect is shiny.

The issue itself is a treat, including the cover article about mass extinctions. Hadn't though about it before, but crinoids like the ones on the right of my banner have actually made through the 5 worst mass extinctions of all time. Fascinating stuff.

Thanks to Peter and Craig for inviting me into this online adventure at Art Evolved, and thanks to Carolyn Gramling for recognizing the next wave in art about our planet's prehistorical fauna.

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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 ***

Ooo, I like this term: "evolution culture"

What a great description. "Evolution culture".

Adam Goldstein has penned an academic's guide for blog-newbies in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach, entitled Blogging Evolution. After discussing the style and structure of blogs, Adam Goldstein turns to an insightful and apt look at some loose categories of evolution blogs. Over at Laelaps, Brian Switek has a careful analysis and there's some interesting comments shaping up about missing categories. I find the practice of categorizing the interconnected community of blogs apt and self-referential -and funny. An organizational tree of evolution blogs sprang immediately to mind.

Adam shared via my twitobite account that he had included The Flying Trilobite under the taxonomic family category of "Imaginative" along with Carl Zimmer's cool The Loom. From the article:

I hesitate to call blogs focused on art and culture “imaginative,” because doing so suggests a contrast with the other categories of blogs as “non-imaginative.” I see science as an imaginative endeavor, even at its most arcane. Perhaps “evolution culture” would be a better name for this category.

I like that. We need more of that. We need Richard Dawkins' suggestion for a Mesozoic Symphony. We need evolution hipsters. Oh no wait, hipsters are out. Evolution b-boys then. That never goes away. I sound flippant, but I'm quite serious. Evolution as a concept in nature is tremendously cool, and infinitely fashionable. It needs to reach heights of creative output - and not be mixed up synonymously with development. Understood as it is, simple rules leading to emergent, beautiful, myriad forms and behaviours.

Goldstein's article showcases some interesting categories and a number of blogs. Including some that are not ones I'm familiar with. Seeing it from an outsider's perspective also interests me. Blogs I can't live without were missed, though I credit the author with hitting on so many of the of blogs about evolution. The Flying Trilobite appears alongside The Loom, and with Pharyngula, The Beagle Project, Why Evolution is True, The Evilutionary Biologist and The Wild Side. (How have I missed Genomicron? He's like an hour away from me!) Be sure to check it out - this is not an accomodationist list. This is an (albeit incomplete) list of the right stuff.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
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Art Monday: Goals

There are goals I would like to achieve in my artistic and illustration career.

-->Childrens' books fascinate me. Their rhythm, the information good ones impart through a combination of words and images. I would love to illustrate a children's book about evolution by natural selection. Perhaps with aliens or a made-up creature, or some highly unusual organism like a sea cucumber.

-->Filling up a whole bookshelf with magazines and books containing at least one illustration by me remains a goal. This year, I'm off to a pretty good start with Secular Nation, Open Laboratory 2008 and La Mente di Darwin.

-->Having a book of illustrations and a story given the spotlight and altering my career the way three of my artsy-heroes have remains an end-goal of mine. James Gurney's Dinotopia series, and Wayne Barlowe's radical direction change in his Barlowe's Inferno have my mind ticking all the time, developing a narrative and waiting for the day I am able to give it a shot.

-->I want to illustrate a comic book cover. Cloak & Dagger or Man-Thing. And do some album art for an electro- or industrial-goth band.

-->Continuing to make strides in online art, such as the blog banners I've done for Shelley Batts & Steve Higgins, Dale McGowan and Dan Rhoads -- it's a niche I didn't imagine five years ago. Wouldn't a collection of blog banners be a great coffee table book?

-->Making enough income from my art that I could produce more. That's a goal. As with most artists, the work is fantastic and I love to get it; it drives me forward. No, no, I'm understating it. I hunger for that, I'm desperate for that, it vexes me each day. I have a good day-job. But I want painting & being creative & failing & overcoming & mark-making & the astonishment of a great image (I created that?). I need to go to there.

-->Doing a colloborative project on a larger scale, a movie, a video game, a group book. Yeah.

-->Auction off an original piece and make a ton of money to give to The Beagle Project.

-->A sit-down portrait with a scientist whose writing I admire. Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Richard Fortey- there's so many, and I have sketches for some.

I have a lot of work to do. Blogging has brought me closer to many of these goals already. It's an amazing time we live in, when images can hurtle around the world so quickly. I live in Toronto Canada, and have been published in Italy and commissioned in Cyprus, as well as by my neighbours to the South. That's a kind of awesome.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.
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La Mente di Darwin has launched!

This certainly is a busy year for Charles Darwin. Man gets around.

My Darwin Took Steps image has been busy as well. Shaking with excitement, I went to the post office to pick up a package this weekend: La Mente di Darwin is here!


A few months ago I was contacted by science-philosopher-now-author Andrea Parravicini about using Darwin Took Steps on the cover of his first book, La Mente di Darwin. Negotiations with Negretto Editore went smoothly, despite the image having appeared on two other publications this year, Open Laboratory 2008 and Secular Nation magazine. Advice: always be upfront with this type of thing with all parties.

Thank you to Andrea Parravicini! I wish I knew Italian.

The book has launched and is available for sale here. From what Andrea has told me, it generated some good buzz at the Fiera Internazionale del Libro in Torino. Cheers!


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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 ***
Andrea Parravicini also signed my copy, which is awesome.

Open Laboratory 2008 launch!

It's here!


A big gaudy tail feather in my cap.

Thanks to Dave Ng of The World's Fair for a fun collaboration, and making my artwork look so good. Dave and I backed-and-forthed with the cover a bit, along with input from editor Jennifer Rohn of Mind the Gap and series editor Bora Zivkovic of A Blog Around the Clock. Dave did the heavy lifting, I just smeared the background around and tried not to crave chocolate-favoured coffee while I did it.

There's a ton of exciting entries I can't wait to read. My first book cover, and second publication within just a few weeks! I plan on waltzing around town with this book, letting people judge it by its cover.

Remember too, purchase of Open Laboratory 2008 goes to supporting next year's ScienceOnline unconference. This book is crafted for the love of reading science online.

You can find badges supporting the book, as well as a list of the editors, and blogs that are doing a shout-out all at A Blog Around the Clock.

Whaddaya think? Do we need a brief "making of" post?

(The Darwin image featured here is available in a variety of t-shirts from RedBubble. A portion of the proceeds goes toward The Beagle Project.)

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