Sketches Better Than Paintings

Sometimes I wonder if the sketches look better than the paintings. 

Trilobite Boy with Gargoyles - sketch.

Trilobite Boy with Gargoyles - complete. 

There's something about the scratchiness of it I don't usually retain in the finished pieces. That's why I think I'm enjoying drawing and then placing the original drawing over the digital painting on a multiply layer. I'm catching the scratchiness a bit better. 

Avimimus - pencil drawing.

Avimimus - painted using the Sketch Club app on my iPhone. 

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Latest Fashion From Paris

Coloured this pencil sketch using the Sketch Club app on my iPhone. The original is owned by Morgan Jackson of Biodiversity in Focus.

We're having a light family day at home after staying up late with good friends to ring in the New Year.

I'm going to try posting quick sketches more often. 2012 was my lightest year of blogging here on The Flying Trilobite, though not of blogging in general considering my posts on Symbiartic.

Last year was fantastic and I did some of the most important illustration artwork I've ever had the opportunities for to date.

Can't wait to see what 2013 brings.

New Year's Goblin

New Year's Goblin © Glendon Mellow

Happy New Year to all my friends, families and supporters of my art and The Flying Trilobite blog!

Next year, may all your goblins be small-ish and cheery.

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Two-Headed Mutant Ammonite

© Glendon Mellow

I mentioned on Twitter I was drawing a two-headed mutant ammonite. 
Here's the discussion. 

. @flyingtrilobite's tweet makes me wonder: are there any fossils of two-headed animals?

— Ed Yong(@edyong209) August 29, 2012

@edyong209 @flyingtrilobite Yep. A two-headed reptile hatchling:news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/0…

— Mary Beth Griggs (@MaryBethGriggs) August 29, 2012

I LOVE SCIENCE AND TWITTER AND THE WORLD RT @marybethgriggs: @flyingtrilobite Yep. A two-headed reptile hatchling:bit.ly/RmKx5s

— Ed Yong(@edyong209) August 29, 2012

@edyong209 See rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/1/81… in Biology Letters - 2-headed champsosaur from China's Cretaceous

— Andrew A. Farke (@AndyFarke) August 29, 2012

@edyong209 If you believe in yourself, one day *you* might be a two-headed fossil, Ed. Make your own dreams come true.

— Glendon Mellow (@flyingtrilobite) August 29, 2012

@edyong209 @flyingtrilobite SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.

— Brian George (@brianggeorge) August 29, 2012

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Fossil Fish Sketch

Loosely based on Diplomystus, here's a fossil fish I've been sketching while waiting to pick up my son from daycare.

High-Yield Shark Fin Farming

Inspired by this Twitter conversation.

Hybrid Flying Trilobite

Recent sketch in my Moleskine.

Losing heroes

This is what getting older is, isn't it?  I mean at my stage in life. Losing heroes.  

I feel like I just got to this party. I've been blogging about art, science and atheism for almost 5 years, and seriously reading about atheism another 5 before that.  I just got here, and one of the most interesting guests had to go.

Feeling selfish this morning. I want to take the day, eschew my professional responsibilities and do a proper portrait of the man to make up for dawdle of a sketch I did when I heard the news in the middle of the night.

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Hitchens sketch

This is a terrible, awful sketch of Christopher Hitchens, who died today and deserves better than my scratching at 2a.m. after two nights of no sleep from our teething baby. I'm posting it anyway. Fuck it.

Hitchens wrote with his verve and sharpness when he shouldn't have had any energy left.  I can post a sketch done out of dealing with my feelings at the loss of one of atheism's great champions and an author I enjoyed. This drawing was about the process upon immediately reading the news on Twitter. Done in ArtRage Studio Pro.

I think I got the eyes right. Hold your hand up and cover the lower half of the image. Unyielding, strong, you can hide behind those eyes like shields of reason.

I will miss him.

Here's Hitchens in defense of the Danish cartoonists targeted by fanatics. Every artist can learn from his defense of free speech.

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The best terrible painting (and decision) I've made.

It's been a year.

A year since I left my management job with a dynamic art supply retailer I'd been employed by for 10 years.

Above is a little painting I did the following Monday, my first day as a full-time freelancer.  It's kind of a poorly-painted little oil painting I call Freelance Leap, and it represents my excitement and anxiety at leaving a secure job and diving into my illustration and social media work.

I'm still glad I made the change to challenge myself in most ways. But I cannot deny, times have also been much rougher than I ever imagined. It's been the best and worst year ever.

Reading Jesse Bering's piece on Bering in Mind, Half Dead: Men and the "Mid-Life Crisis" has me wondering about which option of Jacques' will happen with my creativity in mid-life (note to self: you're 37 you're already there): will my current state of anxiety propel me to greater heights like Bach? Or will I do a major about-face in my creative style, brining me larger success than before?  (The third option, dying somehow, is off the table as far as I'm concerned.)

Good friend and amazing illustrator Eric Orchard shared this piece on G+ yesterday, by Scott Timberg from Salon: The Creative Class is a Lie. It's an engaging piece, covering everything from retail jobs to writers. And it offers a ton of interesting things to think about for illustrators.

Up until now, my business model has been:
1. Make cool artwork, mostly for a niche scientifically-literate audience
2. Put online for people to view for free.
3. Take commissions for originals or prints from people who like it enough to want their own, or have a budget.

It works. It works better than not being online ever did. It works haltingly, in fits and starts, with many months in between. It's not enough to feed my family. How does this whole creative economy do that? Or all we destined to be like rock stars, where only a tiny few ever make it despite the public''s hunger for imagery and illustration?

I outlined in my Symbiartic post, It's Time for Illustrators to Take Back the Net that illustrators supporting each other when faced with image theft online could put the profession back on a path to respectability.  Would income follow?

I miss the guy I was when I did that terrible little painting, above. I'm still optimistic I might get to that amusement park in the distance, but my feathers are bedraggled.

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Making of The Last Refuge (repost)

This is a repost from last year.  I've been thinking about the process on this painting, and trying to apply some of the lessons learned in some new work I have incubating in my brain and my sketchbook. 
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Earlier this month I debuted a new painting, commissioned by Kevin Zelnio of Deep Sea News and The Other 95%.  You can see Kevin's post about The Last Refuge here, and who it was for. 

Here's a little about the process of making that painting. 

Kevin had mentioned it to me quite a while earlier, the first time we met in person.  The idea rattled around in my head quite a bit, so there wasn't a lot of prep work needed for this one. 

I started with the sketch above, done using my Faber-Castell Pitt pens.  It's a typical type of starting sketch for me, not a lot of stuff that may make sense to someone else.  I'll try to explain it after the jump.
First of all, it's two sketches side by side.  Let's look at the right one: the little "x" marks all around are a typical comic book notation for all black background. I knew I wanted heavy black shadows, and the light source coming from behind. 

You can see the original composition was quite symmetrical:  I wanted almost a reverent feel, almost like a religious landscape.  It's an easier feeling to invoke with obvious geometry and I thought black smoker thermal vents on either side would evoke that. 

Turned on Die Antwoord  and Massive Attack videos on my 'puter, made some coffee (mocha java) and got started painting.  Used black acrylic for a base in the background. As oil paints age, they become darker and more transparent, so a dark ground will prevent the painting from bleaching over time. 

But at the last second I changed the composition.

Something about all that indanthrene blue...I needed to give the ocean itself more space.  I jettisoned the symmetrical composition for a more natural one.  Also, I wanted a series of lines of light that would direct the eye around the painting in a trangular way, and the submersible hiding behind a smoker wouldn't have helped.

I stayed with a classical compositions with three distances.  The first distance, is the rock at the bottom left with the big standard trilobite (Elrathia kingi is one of my favourites).  This typically gives the viewer an entryway into the painting, and since we're in the West, starting on the left is typical.  The trilobite kind of gazes and points into the rest of the painting. The 2nd, or middle distance, brings in more detail, and shows the "story" of the painting.

When painting the submersible, originally I hadn't add much in the way of light.  I knew I wanted to make some dramatic beams, and a halo, but if I did that and it looked awful, I wouldn't be able to get that smooth deep blue of the surrounding water without starting completely over in the background.

Had to go for it. I was happy with the result, but I still miss that deep mysterious blue cutting down the left hand side.  The light is more dramatic, less tranquil.  

The shape of the light beam is actually inspired by comics. I still pick up Marvel or Dark Horse comics now and then, (love New Avengers) and the shape of the light beams is roughly the same as when a ninja throws multiple stars: the arc of their hand intercut with the path of the throwing stars. If you read comics, you probably know what I mean. 

For the title, I kicked around names like "Deep Discovery" and suchlike, but Kevn supplied the perfect one:  The Last Refuge.

My aim for The Last Refuge was to create a painting the recipient could sit still and look at, and notice little details in the edges.  The cluster of trilobites on the right. The tubeworms rising out of the dark. The shape and texture of the sulpherous smoke. 

It's about a dream, isn't it?  Richard Fortey in Trilobite!  Eyewitness to Evolution said, "Hope has faded that, when today's mid-ocean ridges were explored by bathyscape, in some dimly-known abyss there might still dwell a solitary trilobite to bring Paleozoic virtues into the age of the soundbite..,". 

I hope Kevin and the painting's recipient enjoy The Last Refuge for many years to come. 
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The Last Refuge is also available in a variety of prints from my online print shop. I recommend the laminated print (shown below) or the charcoal frame with dark mat. 

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A Robot Out for a Stroll

A robot out for a stroll. 

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Feeling like Spider-Man

Created in ArtRage Studio Pro

Things are happily hectic these days. Consider this a report-card on my independent commission-career.

My wife is awesome, our baby is happy (except for the teething) and we've managed to spend some really good times with our nephew this summer.

Career-wise, thanks to Symbiartic on Scientific American, I've interviewed a ton of really fascinating people involved in the art+science intersection and have no end in sight to new posts for that blog. It's a real science-art movement, and I'm lucky enough to be a part of it.

I've been attempting to be less precious with my artwork, and dive into more sketches. The Flying Trilobite has been great to just put up my little scratches.

Lately the thing I'm most excited about are the opportunities that are popping up from so many unexpected places. Thanks to everyone who's thinking about me and my artwork for being inspired enough to want to work with me.  It keeps me going.

Like Spider-Man, I've recently begun meeting and collaborating with more and more super-people in the arts and sciences.

I have to be careful though.

Some exhaustion is setting in.  4 part-time jobs. I'm currently working an entry-level retail position with a lot of part-time hours to help pay the bills. I'm still doing social media (Twitter) work for a major national retail brand and hoping to add more clients like that so I can potentially stay home with the baby and work from home. Symbiartic is a blast, and I'm giving that my all. I have a couple of exciting science-art commissions right now. And I'll be giving another talk on science-art and blogging at Harbourfront here in Toronto next month.

Like Spider-Man, I have the ability to do some spectacular things, but the fridge is all-too often empty since spectacular abilities don't always pay the bills.

Despite the 4 part-time jobs, money is really tight at home and each month is a challenge. It's easy to lose focus on what's next. My big hope at the moment is to take on 3-4 new social media clients like the one I'm already doing, and let go of the retail. Then, evenings and weekends open up for Symbiartic and commissioned illustration.

Recently, a good talk with my wife's uncle let me really step back and look at the big picture again, which is why I'm excited for the future. I've been so focused on the immediate need to literally feed my family and keep the lights on, I was losing sight of how far I've come. Thanks to everyone for your support.

I'm expecting amazing things from myself in the near future, so you can too.


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Ten Years

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Beware of Explodey Anklyosaurs

Beware of explodey pineapple anklyosaurs.

Sometimes they travel far distances before kabooming.

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This post marks the return of Art Mondays on The Flying Trilobite! My posting has been a bit sporadic lately, so I think I'll return to this discipline that I held for a few years on the blog.  At the very least, expect new art and art commentary each Monday.

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Latest Fashion from Paris

Stylish, non?

For more about making insects stylish and yummy, check out this Symbiartic post by Kalliopi Monoyios.

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The Fish Stands for Surrealism

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Avimimus sketch

Had some fun with textures and feathers on this Avimimus sketch earlier in the summer.

Thought I'd post it now, since there's an interesting discussion started by Craig Dylke over at ART Evolved about dinosaur feathers and accuracy in science art and film.

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Royal Canadian Flying Trilobite

Royal Canadian Flying Trilobite.

Circa WWI. There have been tremendous advancements since then of course.


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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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Cloak & Dagger © Marvel Comics, fanart being done without permission.
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