This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Scumble #29 featured images by graphic designer David Orr of Love in the Time of the Chasmosaurs:
David Orr is a graphic designer and book cover artist who I had the privilege of sharing a session with at ScienceOnline2011, along with John Hawks. You can view the video of our art+science talk here.
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Orogenic Design on Cafepress - you can find the designs in this post, as well as others on sale.
Orogenic Design - Orr's professional homepage and portfolio site.
Love in the Time of the Chasmosaurs - David is most well-known for his pop culture and dinosaur blog, which he co-writes with Marc Vincent. Make sure to check out the banners he's designed to raise awareness of the fight to keep creationism out of his native Indiana's schools.
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@anatotian on Twitter
How to name a dinosaur - Scientific American Guest Blog
Here's a few more of those slick retro designs:
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And now for a round-up of recent science-art links:
ScienceOnline, Day 1 - Katy's Notebook. Katy did some sketchnotes after the session led by Perrin Ireland. If you look close, you can see both me and my co-blogger Kalliopi in this post!
Live-scribing at ScienceOnline2012 - Steve D., Mad Art Lab. More of the live-scribing from the unconference.
Making Shapes: math-art by Gemma Anderson - The Soft Anonymous.
Happy Holidays from SpongeLab! - SpongeLab Interactive.
Art on the Moon? - Bioephemera.
Insects, Large & Small - Myrmecos.
Gondwana: Concept Art Goes Palaeo - David's Really Interesting Pages.
Science Gets a New App - Et Cetera, the blog of Lena Groeger.
Floating Weeds at Natural Bridges State Park - Walkabout. Never underestimate the difficulty in painting plants in scummy water. Love this little snippet.
A View From Jupiter's Moon Io - LucyJain's Blog. I dropped my mouse. Stunning.
Creativity Takes Teamwork - Kelley Swain, CultureLab. Do teams help science-art collaborations? Is better work made out of a group or single ego?
Aurora's Kodak Moment - Annette Heist, Science & the Arts.
Oddball Umbilicus - Sci-ence.
Why do YOU Blog? - Medical Museion.
Colored Pachyrhinosaurus - The CAW Box.
Indiana's New State Flag - Love in the Time of the Chasmosaurs. Celebrating creationism.
Mutant Flowers! -Surly Amy, Mad Art Lab.
A Polychaete - A Natural History of Runswick Bay.
A New Song to Sing - Alicia Hunsicker's Blog.
Deep in the forest you're not alone - Vanessa Ruiz, Street Anatomy.
Painting Hawaii's Endangered Plants - ArtPlantae Today.
Newly Discovered Burgess Shale Creature - SONSI.
Refocusing - Weapon of Mass Imagination.
Oil Production Impression - Contemporary Petroglyphs
The Eight Elemental Amphibians (of Sally Williams) Panel #7 - OmegaFauna. Don't miss this work-in-progress series by Sharon Lynn Wegner-Larsen. Wow.
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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 hot cup of coffee and enjoy the science-art on the links above.
Click here for recent Scumbles and here for even earlier Scumbles.
