This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Let's jump right into the science-art this week:
This week's image: Flame Nebula by Lucy Jain:
Lucy Jain can be found at:
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and she is available for commissioned paintings.
This week's links!
Art Imitates Life - Heather Ward Wildlife Art. Heather starts a new piece inspired by her recent evacuation from wildfires raging in New Mexico.
Painting Biology: Love & Death - featured work by artologica/Michele Banks, Guru Magazine. Click the title on the opening page to go to the article - you'll be rewarded with Michele's eye-popping, often cell-inspired watercolour work.
Illustrations convey body's secrets - Tracie White, Stanford School of Medicine. (Thanks to Symbiartic reader Eva for the link!)
Ants in my pants - biocreativity.
It's All In Your Head - Steve D., Mad Art Lab
A painting's "aura": repost - The Flying Trilobite. Where I discuss the impact of the original artwork versus reproductions. Then head to Learning to Love Lichtenstein - Renaissance Oaf, for artist-writer Sean Craven's response.
Aminal sketches - Clever Girl. Nothing better than heading to the zoo to draw the expressive ambassadors there.
High Voltage Art - science and painting - Current Trends. Check out this intriguing work by artist Cory Hunter, who runs electrical currents through gouache paintings!
New work: Smart Girls Rock! - Art from a biological perspective.
Bugs beetles and bees: a day of insect collecting - SONSI the Southern Ontario Nature & Science Illustrators blog.
Ooh, I love jerboas - An Eye for Science.
Greenaway has got it wrong: there is no 'visual illiteracy' - but there is a widespread 'material illiteracy' - Biomedicine on Display.
Viperfish - elnefashu.
"Alternative Evolution" of Dinosaurs Foresaw Contemporary Paleo Finds - Brian Switek, Scientific American. Brian discusses how Dougal Dixon's beautifully illustrated book The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution has gained new relevance.
Anomalocaris Plush in green - PaleoGirl/Melissa Walcott.
Third Culture?: From the Arts to the Sciences and Back Again in Shanghai - Roger Malina. Malina fights back against the idea that science cannot be art, and is instead a type of translation.
Sphingidaea faery - ThaliaAngel91/Annika Lange.
Cover art on scientific journals - biocreativity. Some of the excellent reasons why good art matters in science communication.
Color Terms and Perception - Gurney Journey.
New Work Wednesday: Lava Flow - Mary C. Nassar. Fascinating contemporary painting.
The Fractal Universe - DeviantArt. The debate rages on the popular art network about whether fractals are art or just
patterns made by mad people computer generated patterns. Over 3000 comments so far, fighting it out. See? Fractal people are crazy, as I tried to indicate in my first post on Symbiartic (see if you can find the fractal link on the imagemap).
It lurks beneath - Biodiversity in Focus
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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.
This began as a series of posts on my personal blog, The Flying Trilobite, as a way to brush highlights over the tremendous amount of science-based art that’s out there. I can’t begin to cover it all, so here’s a scumble over some recent posts that I found interesting, provocative, or otherwise caught my eye from the Science Artists Feed, and other sources.
Science-art is becoming an increasingly popular form of science communication and entertainment. Drawing from fine art, laboratory work, scientific illustration, concept art and more, watch how artists spread scientific literacy and play with the inspiring concepts in science. Doing the Scumble posts, I hope to connect artists with each other, and expose their work to a wider audience. Remember, a lot of these artists are available for commissions and have online shops for original art and reproductions. Why not put some art on your wall that means something more than "weird for the sake of weird"?
Put your feet up, make yourself a cup o' joe and enjoy the science-art on the links above. You'll notice that I've flipped the format of this week's Scumble. Kalliopi suggested it, both so the blurb on our homepage doesn't always read the same way, and I like it for the featured artwork being front and center. Thanks Kalliopi!
Click here for recent Scumbles and here for even earlier Scumbles.
