Tuesday 31 May 2011

New WIP: - Marvel's Man-Thing

I don't know what it is about hot weather and Fan Art - I'm always compelled to do my favourite Marvel and Star Wars characters in the summer.






I think this pencil drawing of "Capturing Man-Thing" I did a couple of years back will finally get the colour treatment using ArtRage 3 over the next few days.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Man-Thing is © Marvel Comics and I am doing this fan piece without permission. I do not plan on making any profit from it.

Saturday 28 May 2011

Scumble #15

Scumble:
"A painting technique in which semi-opaque or thin opaque colors are loosely brushed over an underpainted area so that patches of the color beneath show through." 
From The Artist's Handbook, by Ray Smith.  

Highlighting recent posts I found interesting, provocative, or otherwise caught my eye from the Science Artists Feed, and other sources.


Time to brew yourself a cup something caffeine-y, put your feet up and enjoy the science-art!


Click here for earlier Scumbles.




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Galileo Sketches of the Moon - An Eye for Science.

Awesome New Trilobite T-shirt! - Neurotic Physiology - Scicurious is nicely fashion backward. Or retro. Or something with a joke about prehistory and style.

Creating Atheist Fine Art - Glendon Mellow, Mad Art Lab. Proud to be asked to contribute to this clever site and community!

A  new generation of digital artists - Calla Cofield, CultureLab.

Visualizing Plants with Botanical Symbols - ArtPlantae Today.

Control over nature in music and art, Sumt Paul-Choudhury, CultureLab.

Tiny Thumbnails, The Tiny Aviary. Cute!

Concept scribble: Archie - drip | David's really interesting pages. Love the drama and clouds in this little expertly done concept scene. David Maas is doing a bunch of these, don't miss them!

New metaphors for sci-tech-med museums - Biomedicine on Display.  Is a museum like a blog?

Milky Way over the desert in Utah - An Eye for Science.

History of Biology - SpongeLab. Game trailer! (video)

AI: Science Imagery, or Brightly Colored Liquid in Beakers - Brian G George, Mad Art Lab. Fight the stereotypes ruled by chemistry!

Squids in SPACE! - Katy's Notebook.

Scumble pick of the week: Goodbye, Spirit - by QuarkSparrow.


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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

Thursday 26 May 2011

Creating Atheist Fine Art - post at Mad Art Lab

I'm really excited that today I've got my first post up at Mad Art Lab, the Skepchick art, skepticism and science blog.

It's raising the issue of creating atheist fine art - can metaphorical imagery create paintings as effective in their message as Gnu Atheist bloggers do in their writing?

I'd love for The Flying Trilobite's readership to check out the post, and please comment there! Do I make a good case?  Are there better examples than the ones I use?

Thanks to Surly Amy for the invitation to contribute to Mad Art Lab and to Brian G George for help with editing and formatting.

Check out the post!

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

Wednesday 25 May 2011

Style Question

As I wander aimlessly in the woods of a webcomic sketchy experiment thing in an attempt to both develop new skills and get the Trilobite Boy story down, I come to the question of style. Here are all the panels so far, in order, of the Trilobite Boy webcomic. Click to enlarge.

What's your favourite image so far?














Spoilers after the jump: 

Sunday 22 May 2011

Trilobite Boy #5: Arrival

The new page is up! 


This is a lower quality version than the one at the webcomic. Click to see it!

I did this one in ArtRage 3, mostly with the watercolours. The Royal Ontario Museum is one of my favourite places to go and draw, and I've loved it since I was a kid. The new design is something I wanted to highlight too. It's stunning.

You can also view the new page large, here, or below the fold.

Friday 20 May 2011

Scumble #14 - Return of the Scumblies



Scumble:
"A painting technique in which semi-opaque or thin opaque colors are loosely brushed over an underpainted area so that patches of the color beneath show through." 
From The Artist's Handbook, by Ray Smith.  

Highlighting recent posts I found interesting, provocative, or otherwise caught my eye from the Science Artists Feed, and other sources.

This will be the first Scumble since February, a few months back. Now with a new logo! - what do you think?

As a new dad and freelancer in lean times I gave them a break. I won't expect to catch up on everything since then, and really the Scumble posts are just a loosely-passed brush highlighting a few areas. Hence the clever name.

So, brew yourself a cup of joe, put your feet up and enjoy the science-art!


Click here for earlier Scumbles.
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AI: What a Beautiful Work of Art! Here, Let Me Ruin It For You - Brian G., MadArtLab.  Discussing copyrights, mash-ups and making money.

What's up, Stretch? - McHugh Studios - more thoughts on fan art and copyrights. Also, The Messy World of Fan Art and Copyright - Plagiarism Today.

My palette - Jeffrey Hayes: Contemporary Still Life Paintings. For anyone who thinks art is all fluff, here's a great post on chemistry and colour theory in oil painting by a modern master.

Waking up Inside an Object - Adam, Biomedicine on Display.

Espresso Brain - prints by Michele Banks/@artologica. Also, Behold! My Coffee Brain! - review by Scicurious, Neurotic Physiology.

Hadrosaur Gallery - Art Evolved. The lovable duckbills featured by many of the Art Evolved contributors.

Adrian Bobb Portfolio - came across this Canadian concept artist and scientific ilustrator a couple of weeks back. Stunning portfolio, and you can leave comments on the art.

BFA Thesis Exhibition - Omegafauna.  Congratulations Sharon!  Love love those prehistoric prints.

New Print Giveaway: Galapagos Finches - The Tiny Aviary. Enter!

Giveaway! Botanical Art Note Cards & Matching Seals - Carol Creech Illustration. Enter!

Instead of Words: An Artistic Journey Into the Spirit - interview with Carolina Avalos by Ruthanna Gordon, Mobius ASI.  Interesting interview - a mix of philosophy, spirituality, and the muddiness many artists subscribe to between actual material oneness and causality. Artwork is excellent.

Art Talk with Arthur Huang - interview by Paulette Beete, Art Works. Interesting that there's only one image accompanying the interview and no links to his site.  You can find his work here.

Trevor Jackson Skulls - Jennifer von Glahn, Street Anatomy.

Trilobite Boy - I've started a new webcomic on my character.

Art and religion for science policy?  - bioephemera. More excellent comments from Jessica Palmer.  Jessica, if you read this, please stop peppering your posts with questions if you are going to keep comments disabled. It hurts my brain. And puppies.

Sasquatch illustration featured on Royal Canadian Mint coin - News from the Studio by Emily S. Damstra.

Photos from the exhibit - SONSI - Southern Ontario Nature & Science Illustrators. Show is on now at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington Ontario.  Two of my pieces are hanging there.

Birds-of-paradise: encountered on the street, in passing - Tetrapod Zoology.

Flame Nebula - Lucyjain's Blog.

Pick of the Scumble:  Muddy Colors' tribute to the passing of sf and fantasy (and so much more check out the anatomy paintings) artist-illustrator Jeffrey Catherine Jones.


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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Museum Robot Guard - wip

©  Glendon Mellow 2011

Say hello to Mr. G, the Museum Robot Guard.  Or at least his upper torso, it's a work-in-progress. Originally that thing in his chest didn't start out as an eye, but it's kind of gone that way.  Thinking about WWI biplanes when I painted this.

Working on the last panel of the next Trilobite Boy page in ArtRage 3.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

Sunday 15 May 2011

Trilobite Boy arrives at the ROM - wip

Here's what's on my desktop this morning. Trilobite Boy arriving at the Royal Ontario Museum.  It's a work-in-progress.  


Click to enlarge.

Getting used to ArtRage 3, loving some of the tools.  The rulers are helpful, and right after I took this screenshot I realized I can use the frosted palette knife on the lettering. I'm aiming to ink the outlines and use the watercolour brushes for the colour - I love adding random little drops of water and paint on the image. Hoping to give it a bit more of an animated/anime look in this panel. 


I love both the old and new R.O.M. and can't wait to paint the building in the next panel.

You can see the beginning of Trilobite Boy's adventure on my webcomic Tumblr, and some clothes & stickers in my merch store.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

Saturday 14 May 2011

Trilobite Boy tees and stickers!

They're ready: the first two Trilobite Boy t-shirt designs

Trilobite Boy on a skateboard. Probably late getting somewhere.

The Trilobite Boy fangirl shirt design, seen in the webcomic and highly requested on Twitter.
Pick you shirt colour, long sleeve, short sleeve or hoodie. 
Stickers!  Mystify your friends and neighbors and plaster these everywhere. 

All the apparel in my shop is sweatshop-free, and you can choose multiple styles and a whole whack of colours. Multiple currencies are accepted by RedBubble, secure through PayPal.

You can view the whole shop here, or go straight to the Trilobite Boy merch



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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

Friday 13 May 2011

ArtRage 3 - 1st steps

(Blogger had a a small problem and deleted the most recent post - this was originally posted on May 11 2011, two days ago.  Still love ya Blogger!  Best Blogging platform out there. )
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Received a very cool gift yesterday - ArtRage 3!

Readers of this blog know I like to use a digital painting program called ArtRage.  The main feature that first attracted me to it was the interface. When I saw all the tool menus arrayed on the screen in ImagineFX's Fantasy Workshop book, in a tutorial by Francis Tsai, I was smitten. 

Like most artists, I'm a visual person.  For almost two decades, I've painted in oils.  I'm used to a quick mix, grabbing and dabbing my colour onto my brush and painting.  I usually do it while listening to fast big beat or goth industrial music to keep up my speed. Back and forth to the palette. And as much as I love and appreciate Photoshop and Gimp, reading drop-down menus to find my tools interrupts the flow. 

Enter ArtRage.  I bought version 2.5 a couple of years back, and you can see the interface below. 

Example of the ArtRage 2.5 interface.  Image © Glendon Mellow 2010.




It's all right there: the colours, the lights and darks, the tool kit of digital oil brushes and markers. I bought it, and it was easy to use. My Trilobite Boy and gargoyles painting that headlined the io9 article about my work recently was done using ArtRage 2.5. I even used the glitter tool to create some tarry grit on the building rooftop. 

ArtRage is relatively inexpensive compared to some programs like Photoshop or Corel Painter. In Canadian $ (about on par at the moment with USA) it's $82 for the full ArtRage 3 Studio Pro. However, while my freelancing has been busy-and-low-income, it's beyond my means at the moment and for the foreseeable future. So this gift was amazing and timely. My jaw literally dropped. 

One of the tools I was most excited to try, is the new watercolour brush.  It turns out, there's not just one, there's many (and more oil settings too). Here's my first attempt at monkeying around with ArtRage 3 (click to enlarge):

Done with ArtRage 3.  ©  Glendon Mellow 2011
New interface in ArtRage 3.  Image ©  Glendon Mellow 2011




I'm ecstatic. I woke early to play with it again today. Our 9-year old nephew came over to try it too (he has 2.5 as well.) With 2.5 there were a couple of things I was always frustrated I couldn't do, and I had to import it into Photoshop to do (you can import back and forth to Photoshop without flattening layers). Those included the selection brush and text. ArtRage 3 has 'em.

Okay, I'll post more process stuff later.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow


Tuesday 10 May 2011

Webcomic sketches moving along

#3


The Trilobite Boy comic sketches are moving along. Instead of one 30 minute sketch a day, I'm going to try for 2 or 3 panels a week in a bid to increase the quality. They're meant to be short, speedy exercises where I experiment with digital painting and lay out the Trilobite Boy story at the same time. I have hang-ups about the quality though.

You can find the series at my new Trilobite Boy Tumblr. Thanks to everyone on Tumblr, Twitter, deviantArt, Facebook, The Flying Trilobite and io9 who is encouraging this series!

wip #4
Completed (sorta) #4 - a number of people on Twitter asked about the girl on the left's shirt.
I hope to have some Trilobite Boy shirts done by the weekend!
wip #5, in ArtRage.
In other news, I had a couple of job interviews. I'm in some serious financial difficulties at the moment, and thanks to everyone who purchased prints or calendars or stickers recently in my Print Store.  It's been a tough few months after the baby arrived, and freelancing isn't going strong yet.

Great post up at Muddy Colors by Christopher Moeller "Life After Art School: Five Years to an Illustration Career". Well, this blog recently completed year 4; cause for hope?



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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

Friday 6 May 2011

Trilobite Boy and his fans - WIP

Here's a work-in-progress for the Trilobite Boy comic series.  Our hero signing autographs for his tweeny fans. 





I was hoping to do a daily 30 minute sketch to tell the Trilobite Boy story, and so far that hasn't happened. I've been under considerable stress while looking for a new regular source of income - so now I'm hoping to do at least three of these a week.

Originally the idea was to do each in 30 minutes and practice getting smarter and faster painting digitally. The one above is taking longer while I mess with gradations and the selection brush in Photoshop Elements 6, and I'm okay with that. The point is to keep challenging myself on a regular basis while making a backbone of story images for Trilobite Boy - I don't have to follow a slavish self-imposed schedule. Above was 30 minutes, not including the pencil drawing.

You can follow the adventures of Trilobite Boy at trilobiteboy.tumblr.com - currently, he's skateboarding to the Royal Ontario Museum, and passing by Toronto's famous Crinoid Tower.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

Monday 2 May 2011

SONSI show underway!






What a terrific day. I`ll report more later.  In the meantime, head to SONSI prez Emily S. Damstra`s blog to see more pictures of our exciting gallery show of nature and science illustration at the Royal Botanical Gallery. 

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

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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