Curious Art Lab

Blue Carbon Based Flowers, for AlphaBands.

So... I'm cheating a bit here. I began this image in homage to Carbon Based Lifeforms, a Swedish ambient music band that is one of my favorites to listen to while sketching. Their music is mostly instrumental with wordless vocals, but lyrics do come in from time to time, such as these:

"Only illogics can find Hidden flaws in a straight logic line. Only erratics recognize Errors in patterns of a perfect design."

These particular lifeforms were of course heavily influenced by the work of Ernst Haeckel, with the central structure inspired by an allotrope of carbon popularly known as the Buckyball.

Unfortunately, some very erratic household chaos kept me away from the computer last week, so I missed my chance to chime in with the "C"s for AlphaBands. But as it happened, my choice for "D" was the bizarre alter ego of Kool Keith known as Dr. Octagon. Though his music could hardly be more different from CBL, (and, I should warn, it is mostly extremely NSFW) some of his color-crazed & hallucinatory lyrics somehow wormed their way into the picture:

"I come prepared with the white suit and stethoscope  Listen to your heartbeat, delete beep beep beep  Your insurance is high, but my price is cheap  Look at the land...blue flowers!  Drawing by the purple pond, in the purple pastures blue flowers!  Drawing by the purple pond, yellow ink that flows blue flowers!  Drawing by the pond, look, it's raining yellow" 

So, consider this the visual equivalent of a mashup. It's just a pity that Buckyballs are constructed from hexagons & pentagons, with nary an octagon in the picture.

Animal Collective for AlphaBands!

While waiting for paint to dry on the Dunny I'm currently working on, I thought it would be fun to combine the progress shots for Dunny Ultramarine into a little gif. (Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, it is now possible to dance with one's own backside.) ;-)

Finally I have prints of this piece available on Etsy! Individual parts or all six elements in a bundle, in case you'd like to genetically engineer your own example of Zoorobotany!

Dunny Ultramarine

Shroomdweller

Acrylic on collaged paper on canvas, 12"x6"

This mushroom, like its climber, is entirely imaginary, but it was inspired by various real species. If you are a fan of fungi in its many fanciful forms, be sure to check out this fascinating tumblr: When we die, we become one with the earth. Beautiful photos of some amazing shrooms!

The background engraving was scanned from The Practical Standard Dictionary, 1943; the borders were from an old map.

The not-so-secret message in the annulus refers to a series of books by Eleanor Cameron that I loved as a child. Working on this really made me want to reread those books!

p.s. This one’s dedicated to my friend Heather, an avid mushroom-hunter, & my father, a soon-to-be truffle farmer!

Free Goodies at SPX! Curiotype stickers & more.

Wow-- the end of another Alphabet Project! Of course I still have a few stragglers to fill in, but I must say I'm happy to be (nearly) done with this one. Over the past six months I've certainly learned a lot about Adobe Illustrator,* but frankly I've lost much of my zeal for vector & robots, & I'm itching to get back to more organic artwork, both in subject matter & technique. I have a completely different & fun new series in my head & can't wait to get started! I'm hoping to have my first piece up in the next week or two-- stay tuned!

In the meantime, check out everybody's AlphaBots from A to Z here!

You may have noticed a glaring lack of UV in this alphabet-- no, it's not due to excessive sunscreen use! The last couple of weeks have been a brain-frazzling swirl, but I do intend to fill in the gaps at some point. (I've done the sketches, just didn't have time for AI.)