Stories by Glendon Mellow

The cover to the December issue of SciArt in America magazine is like an explosion in my face. Check out the insane post-apocalyptic enviro-nightmare by painter Alexis Rockman: One of my favourite things about SciArt in America as a magazine, site, and brick & mortar center is that it largely was created out of the ethos, [...]

Once again, paleo-illustrators are being alienated from a movie they could probably love. At least a few paleo-illustrators are discovering their work has been put up on the Jurassic World “as-if-it-was-a-real-park” promotional website without their permission.

Mars – Valles Marineris © Ron Guyatt Sol System – Meteor Shower © Ron Guyatt In an explosion of heroic art deco design, illustrator and designer Ron Guyatt has created a massive series of posters making our own solar system fascinating again.

Triloarte 1 © Samantha Fermo     Triloarte 6 © Samantha Fermo Triloarte 8 © Samantha Fermo Trilobites, in all their wild and crazy biodiverse forms, look delightful in this series by Italian painter Samantha Fermo.

What we find in space continues to challenge our imaginations, and we haven’t even discovered extraterrestrial life yet. Last week,  in Caleb Scharf’s post Astrobiology Roundup: Planets, Moons, and Stinky Comets, he featured the bizarre visualization above.

Spongelab has taken their popular Build-a-Body educational anatomy app and given it a Halloween makeov- umm, makeover is the wrong word. Halloween skin?

Fine artist Elaine Whittaker is challenging us to see ourselves through the eyes of one of humanity’s greatest killers. Take a close look.

Ello and their “you are not a product” manifesto swept through social media discourse like an eyeless smiling tornado a few weeks ago.

Before I began blogging over 7 years ago, I was already putting bat and insect wings on the extinct aquatic arthropods known as trilobites.

  53 million years old, and it may be the smallest mammal that has ever lived. Batodonoides vanhouteni was a shrew-like mammal that scientific illustrator Jen Christiansen has deftly described in this illustration.

With all the grandeur of a Romantic-era painter’s sky, medical illustrator Melissa Sisk created this glowing tribute to the advantageous death of cells.

Scientific illustrator Danielle Dufault is quickly collecting a reputation for her prehistoric animal reconstructions – from dinosaurs to sharks – many while working at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Scientifically informed comics are some of the best kind, and I’ve got a soft spot for unusual animals outside of the Farm and Zoo toyset species such as the amphibian axolotls.

Immy Smith does it all – cartooning, fine art, neuroscience and taking part in the art+science “collaborative of polymathic artists”, Imagining Science.

I love when this group of Alaskan paleoartists has a show – I even have one of their past postcards framed and decorating my sons’ robot-and-dinosaur themed bedroom.

Who could be better positioned for a bit of speculative biology than a parasitologist? Artist and parasitologist Tommy Leung has a mind for puzzling out species networks, and he puts it to – no other word fits – fantastic use when thinking up new creature-relationships.

500 years ago, artist and engraver Albrecht Dürer took the time to carefully and meticulously paint the >Great Piece of Turf. In both the Northern and Southern European Renaissance, studies in preparation of a larger painting were not uncommon.

Paintings by some fine artists can be used to thought-provoking effect as illustrations on news or blog posts about scientific advancements.

With hues inspired by calcite and a plastic toy dimetrodon sitting as a model, Sharon Wegner-Larsen created this stunning watercolour and ink work, Synapsid Sunrise.

University and scientific research center programs are increasingly finding it useful to employ artists and illustrators to help them see things in a new way.

One of the most powerful contributions of scientific illustration is to give us an informed visual where it is typically impossible to find one.

Eleven feet of cement and doll hair, Spike by Julia Buntaine is not only an idea, but an idea conductor writ large. By forcing visitors to walk around an art object so huge and heavy, to take in its undeniable presence, Buntaine creates a proportional importance in space as the neuron does in our lives.

  “Alright sir, let’s see how those fit. Blink rate comfortable? Good, okay let’s try using some VR overlays at middle distance while walking…” The best concept art prompts you to make up stories and join in a fictional world.

Borne of ink and paint by artist Kaitlin Beckett’s steady hand, the OctoBeast ramps up its mating display by brandishing its antlers and displaying its three hearts.