As a medical illustrator, I’m obsessed with terminology. On a daily basis, I deal with hundreds of anatomical terms, most derived from Latin or Greek roots. And I’m a stickler for accuracy. As with our own language, changing just one letter can completely alter the meaning of a word, e.g., the prefix myo- (meaning muscle) becomes mylo- (molar) which could become myelo- (referring to either bone marrow or the spinal cord). As my students will attest, I’m also a stickler for the arcane plural forms of Latin terms. The plural of ramus communicans is rami communicantes and the singular of phalanges is phalanx. There’s no such thing as a “phalange.”

I guess it’s no surprise that my obsession with terminology has spilled over into other facets of my teaching. One of my pet peeves is the misuse of the word “dot,” especially as it is used in the expression “dots-per-inch” or DPI. This simple term is applied to several different (and very distinct) concepts in the graphic arts, leading to widespread confusion. Let’s explore these concepts and why it’s important to keep them straight.

Halftone Dots
The word “dot” was first used in the graphic arts to refer to the tiny pattern of dots that can simulate a continuous tone image using solid ink. Developed in the mid- to late-1800s, this technique – and the use of the term “dot” – predated the computer graphics revolution by more than a century.

As you can see in the image below, a photograph can create a smooth gradation of values from black to white and all shades of gray in between. This is not the case, however, with most printing methods, including offset lithography and desktop digital printing. These technologies can only print areas of solid ink. The ink is never diluted, nor is white ink added to the mix to make shades of gray. The only way to reproduce shades of gray in print is to break the image up into tiny dots that appear to blend into a continuous tone when viewed with the naked eye. Such an image, composed of a pattern of tiny dots, is called a halftone. The dots themselves are known as halftone dots.

Fig. 1 - Left – a smooth gradation from black to white with essentially infinite shades of intermediate gray. Such a gradation cannot be reproduced using typical printing methods. Instead, the image is converted to a halftone, a pattern of tiny dots that vary in size. Light gray areas consist of very small dots, allowing the white of the paper to show through. Dark areas have larger dots, covering most of the paper. Normally the dots are too small to be seen with the naked eye. Right – a printed halftone with an enlarged area showing the dots.

The process begins with a film negative of the original image. Light passes through the negative and then through a screen, usually a plate of glass with a grid of horizontal and vertical lines etched onto its surface. After passing through the screen, the light exposes another piece of film. The screen functions as a diffraction grating, breaking the light into tiny discreet rays, which create the pattern of dots. The result is a duplicate film negative with a pattern of solid dots instead of continuous shades of gray. The duplicate negative is then used to create a plate for the offset printing process.

Fig. 2 - A simple illustration of the photographic halftone process. Light passes through a film negative, then through a screen, and onto another piece of film. The screen breaks the light into distinct beams, creating tiny dots on the duplicate piece of film.

Lines Of Dots
The halftone process introduces another bit of printing terminology that often gets confused with the others. If you look at Figure 1, you’ll see that halftone dots are arranged in orderly rows or lines, usually oriented at an angle to the paper. In the conventional halftone process, the spacing of these lines of dots remains constant throughout the image; only the size of the dots varies to create different shades of gray.

The spacing of lines of halftone dots is known as the screen frequency or line screen and is expressed in lines-per-inch (LPI), i.e., the number of lines (rows) of dots in an inch. Although this is a form of resolution, it is quite different from the resolution of a digital image, which will be discussed below. Remember that this halftone process predates digital imaging by a hundred years.

Although the line screen remains constant throughout a single image (and usually for an entire printed piece) it is possible to use different line screens for different printed pieces (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Comparison of fine and coarse halftone line screens.

The choice of line screen depends almost entirely on the type of paper being printed on. Newsprint, for example, is highly absorbent, allowing ink to soak into the paper and causing the halftone dots to enlarge, a phenomenon known as dot gain. If the lines of dots are too close together, the ink will bleed together and fine details will be lost. Therefore, printing on newsprint (and other cheap papers) requires very coarse line screens, usually around 85 LPI. With such coarse line screens, the halftone dots are often visible to the naked eye, a fact exploited by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (Fig. 4). Better quality paper is coated to minimize dot gain and, therefore, supports much finer line screens. Most books, magazines, and other printed materials are printed at 133 or 150 LPI, while some art books and corporate reports may use very fine screens of 200 LPI or more.

Fig. 4. Roy Lichtenstein’s Nude With Blue Hair (left) and Still Life With Red Jar (right). Many of his paintings reproduced the halftone dots visible in newspaper comics.

Electronic Halftones
The photographic process for generating halftones was the industry standard for nearly 100 years. In the 1970s, companies like Crossfield Electronics and Linotype-Hell developed electronic dot generators that used a laser to translate a scanned image into a halftone film negative. In 1984, Linotype introduced the Linotronics 100 and 300, the first imagesetters that used laser technology to translate a digital image into a halftone. The release of the Linotronics coincided with the introduction of the Macintosh computer running Aldus Pagemaker, the world’s first page layout software. Apple and Linotronics were also the first to employ Adobe’s PostScript page description language, allowing the computer to send graphical information to the imagesetter (and to Apple’s newly-released Laserwriter printer). Thus began the age of desktop publishing.

Imagesetters are still widely used today. They have been supplemented by platesetters that skip the process of making a film negative and use a laser to burn the halftone directly onto a printing plate. Desktop laser printers also use similar technology. However, instead of etching onto film or a plate, the laser creates static electric charges on a rotating metal drum. The drum picks up dry carbon toner and then transfers the toner to a sheet of paper.

Regardless of the specific technology, these electronic halftone systems have one thing in common – they create extremely tiny marks, called spots, printer elements, or even device pixels (not to be confused with pixels on a monitor) which can be combined to create halftone dots of varying sizes.

Imagine that the printing surface (paper, film, or a plate) is divided into a grid of tiny spaces (see Fig. 5). Each of these little spaces corresponds to the smallest possible mark that the laser device can create. If the laser strikes a specific space, it is turned “on” to create a black spot or printer element. In order to generate a halftone pattern, i.e., halftone dots arranged in orderly lines, the printer divides its pattern of spots into a grid of vertical columns and horizontal rows. At the intersection of each row and column is a cluster of printer spots known as a halftone cell. The printer can turn on or off the spots within each cell to create halftone dots of varying sizes. If only a few spots are turned on within each cell, it produces a small halftone dot, which gives the appearance of a light gray. As more spots are turned on within each cell, the halftone dots become larger, producing darker grays.

Fig. 5. In order to draw a solid black line, a laser printer or imagesetter simply uses its laser to draw a continuous line of spots. To create a halftone, the spots are divided into a grid of halftone cells. Turning on different numbers of spots within each cell produces halftone dots of varying sizes, which translate into different shades of gray in the printed piece.

The spacing of these tiny spots or elements is the printer’s resolution. I prefer the term spots-per-inch (SPI), referring to the number of tiny spots or printer elements that the device can lay down in a linear inch. Unfortunately, most printer manufacturers use the more familiar expression dots-per-inch or DPI, a trend that began with the first dot matrix printers in the 1970s. This has lead to significant confusion between printer spots and halftone dots. In fact, many graphics professionals have reversed the terminology, using the word dot (and DPI) to refer to the tiny marks or elements made by the printer and the word spot for what were traditionally called halftone dots. The situation is further complicated by the fact that SPI is also used as a measure of the resolution of a digital scanner (in samples-per-inch).

In spite of current trends, I prefer the traditional use of the word dot to refer to halftone dots that vary in size to create different shades of gray. This was the accepted terminology for over 100 years and is incorporated into other graphics terms such as dot gain, discussed above. I’ll continue to use spots-per-inch throughout this blog when referring to printer resolution, but readers should be aware that it is often used interchangeably with the term dots-per-inch or DPI.

Pixels
One of the most common (and inaccurate) uses of the term dots-per-inch is to describe the density of pixels in a digital image. A pixel (short for “picture element”) is the smallest editable component of a raster image. Pixels are usually square (except in some digital video formats) and are arranged in a grid of horizontal rows and vertical columns. The proper term for the resolution of a raster image is pixels-per-inch (PPI), a measure of the number of pixels in a linear inch in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions. A one-inch square at 300 PPI will be 300 pixels across and 300 pixels tall, for a total of 90,000 pixels.

Sophisticated graphics software such as Adobe Photoshop uses the proper terminology of pixels-per-inch when describing raster images (for example, check out the Image Size dialog box in Photoshop). However, the inaccurate term dots-per-inch has begun to creep into some graphics software, reflecting the widespread misuse of the term to mean any measure of resolution. Even Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop’s close cousin, has fallen victim to the confusion between PPI and DPI. When exporting a PSD, PNG, or BMP file from Illustrator, the resolution options are listed in PPI. But when exporting a JPEG or TIFF file, the output resolution is given in DPI.

Adding further confusion is the term megapixel which is sometimes used as a measure of a digital camera’s resolution. This isn’t really a measure of resolution, per se, since resolution refers to the number of units (dots, pixels, etc.) within a linear measurement (e.g., the number of pixels per inch). Instead, megapixels refers to the total number of pixels that a digital camera can capture and says nothing about whether those pixels are packed tightly together in a small space (high resolution) or spread across a large area (low resolution).

What’s In a Name?
You might ask why all of this matters. Is it just because I’m neurotic about terminology or is there a good reason to keep these terms straight? In my experience as a teacher, I find that my students often confuse these terms, leading to bad decisions about how to construct and print digital images. In my opinion, it’s important to keep the terms straight in order to keep the concepts straight.

Probably the biggest problem that my students encounter is that they assume there’s a one-to-one relationship between pixel resolution of a digital file (PPI), output resolution of a printing device (SPI or DPI) and halftone screen frequency (LPI). For example, they may assume that, in order to print to a 1200 DPI laser printer, the image itself must be 1200 PPI. And they’re usually in the dark about how these numbers relate to halftone screen frequency. There is a relationship, but it’s not necessarily one-to-one.

The correct resolution for a digital graphics file (in PPI) depends on the type of artwork being created, specifically whether it is line art or continuous tone (see Fig. 6). Line art refers to any image that consists of solid black lines, stipple dots, or other black objects against a solid white background. There are no shades of gray (i.e., no halftones). When creating (or scanning) a piece of line art, the resolution of the image should be quite high. Most publishers request that line art be prepared at 600-1000 pixels-per-inch. This will ensure that the black lines will appear crisp and smooth when output to a high-resolution printing device.

Fig. 6. Left – one of my surgical illustrations, a good example of line art. The illustration consists entirely of solid black lines and stipple dots against a white background. Right – surgical illustration by Natt Jacobs, a good example of continuous tone artwork. There are many shades of gray and subtle variations in value.

Continuous tone images are those that contain shades of gray and subtle variations in tone. This includes many types of artwork and virtually all photographs. You might think that a continuous tone image would require higher resolution in order to capture the subtle variations in tone. However, just the opposite is true. Continuous tone images generally lack the hard edges and high contrast of line art, so there’s no need for high resolution to create crisp edges. Instead, continuous tone images require only enough resolution to create a decent halftone.

The rule of thumb is to create continuous tone images with a pixel resolution (PPI) that is twice the halftone line screen (LPI) that will be used in printing the final image. For example, if an image will be printed in a newspaper at 85 LPI, a resolution of 170 PPI is sufficient. For a book or magazine printed at 133 or 150 LPI, the resolution of the digital image should be 266 or 300 PPI. Since 133 and 150 LPI are the most common line screens used for the majority of offset printing, many artists make all of their continuous tone images at 300 pixels-per-inch. But this resolution would not be adequate for high-end printing (artbooks, corporate reports, etc.) which use line screens of 200 LPI or more. Therefore, before even starting an illustration, the artist must know how that image will be used. If the final use is in a printed piece, the artist must know the line screen that will be used by the printer.

Once an illustrator sends a piece off to his/her client, it is the client’s responsibility to make sure that it prints correctly. This means using the right line screen and selecting the correct printing equipment for the job. The illustrator normally doesn’t have to worry about the resolution of the final output device (typically an imagesetter or platesetter). But just to complete this story, I’d like to discuss the relationship between halftone line screen and printer resolution. If you’ve ever seen noticeable banding in your laser prints, this might explain why.

Recall from above that the little spots produced by a printing device are subdivided into clusters called halftone cells (see Fig. 5). The spots within the halftone cell are turned on or off to create halftone dots of varying sizes, resulting in the appearance of different shades of gray. The number of spots within each halftone cell determines the variation in sizes of halftone dots and, therefore, the number of different shades of gray that can be produced. For example, a halftone cell that is 16 spots wide by 16 spots tall will have a total of 256 spots (16 x 16 = 256) and can produce 256 different sizes of halftone dots and, therefore, 256 shades of gray. It just so happens that the human eye can only discern a few hundred shades of gray, so 256 is roughly adequate to reproduce the full range of visible gray values.

You need two pieces of information to determine the number of spots in a halftone cell – the resolution of the printing device (in spots-per-inch) and the line screen frequency (in lines-per-inch). Simply divide the printer resolution by the line screen and the answer tells you how many spots reside in each halftone cell in the horizontal and vertical dimensions. The square of this is the total number of spots within the cell. For example, say you print a 150 line screen to a 1200 SPI laser printer. 1200 divided by 150 equals 8, meaning the halftone cell is 8 spots wide by 8 spots tall for a total of 64 spots (8 x 8 = 64). Therefore, this combination of line screen and printer resolution will produce a print with only 64 shades of gray. The print will have noticeable banding and will be pretty ugly (see Fig. 7).

The bottom line is that a typical office laser printer with a resolution of 1200 SPI does not have sufficient resolution to print a decent halftone at 150 LPI. You need at least 2400 SPI to produce a halftone cell that is 16 x 16 spots, producing 256 shades of gray with no visible banding. This is why professional printing hardware – imagesetters and platesetters – typically print at a minimum of 2400 SPI. With increasing demand for higher line screens (200 LPI and above), these devices often print at 3600 SPI or even higher.

Fig. 7. Top left – printing a high line screen to a low-resolution printer yields a halftone cell with very few spots. This produces a limited range of halftone dot sizes and, therefore, relatively few different shades of gray. Top right – the same line screen printed on a higher resolution printer produces a halftone cell with more spots, more variation in halftone dot sizes and, therefore, more shades of gray. Bottom – using the correct combination of printer resolution and line screen yields an image with a full range of gray values and the appearance of a smooth, continuous tone. However, setting the line screen too high relative to the printer resolution results in fewer gray values and noticeable banding of the image.

Summary
The term “dots-per-inch” or DPI is widely misused among graphic artists, illustrators, and photographers, often used in place of more accurate terms like lines-per-inch (for halftone screens), spots-per-inch (for printer resolution), or pixels-per-inch (for the resolution of digital images). This leads to confusion about the relationship between these concepts. Hopefully I’ve helped to clarify these terms (and how they relate to one another).

Jim Perkins is a Professor in the Medical Illustration program at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses in human gross anatomy, scientific visualization, and computer graphics. He is also a practicing illustrator, creating artwork for several best-selling medical textbooks, mostly in the areas of pathology and physiology. For 20 years, he has been the sole illustrator of the Robbins and Cotran series of pathology texts. He is also part of a team of illustrators who carry on the work of the late Dr. Frank H. Netter, considered by many to be the greatest medical artist of the 20th Century. To see examples of Jim’s work, visit the following links:

RIT faculty page
Netter art

Although Mr. Larson appreciates his many loyal fans and is flattered by this attention to his work, none of his work is available for use in any electronic format for any reason. Mr. Larson feels strongly about not having his cartoons available on web sites, or in any electronic format, until copyright protection legislation is established for the Internet. Making Far Side cartoons available in digital form for anyone to download makes it impossible for Mr. Larson to control how his creative efforts are used — something that is very important to him.

Wow. That’s extreme. What about presentations? No dice, unless you use an overhead projector (what is that, you ask? Good question.) Newsletters? Nope. Posters? Nah. Merchandise? Obviously, no. But my lucky Far Side t-shirt is threadbare – can I buy another through you? Negative, soldier. What about a stinkin’ greeting card? Can I get a greeting card? No. No card for you. NO!

GAAAAAAAAH! Is it me or is this a special kind of paranoia? I understand the fear of losing income from piracy – as an illustrator whose work was taken by South Park without compensation, believe me, I get it – but I don’t think going on Internet lockdown is the solution. More than anything, keeping your work off the Internet prevents you from being part of the conversation and limits your reach substantially (if you were following Glendon’s and my coverage of Pinterest and its terms of service, I’m working on a follow-up along these lines.) But that is for another time. What I really wanted to do here was to highlight great fish humor. And there are other artists who are willing to be part of the conversation. So let’s converse, shall we?

“What next?” by Ed Heck

© Ed Heck. Used with permission.

“No Missing Links” by Tom Toles
This cartoon came out shortly after the announcement of the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae and is a favorite in the Shubin lab…

TOLES © 2006 The Washington Post. Used by permission of Universal Uclick. All rights reserved.

These are two of my faves… as more permissions roll in, I’ll post a few more gems. Enjoy!

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Ghent Altarpiece, closed. From Wikipedia.

Realist painting from the Renaissance can feel imbued with mysterious and powerful presence. These paintings have endured time, scrutiny and use techniques few people understand. I think the combination of unfamiliar, complicated, yet centuries-old technical knowledge can seem almost magical to those who have not studied it.

I’ve discussed oil painting techniques a bit before here on Symbiartic, (The Chemistry of Oil Painting, August 2011) and like any knowledge, pulling back the curtain on oil painting techniques can raise the appreciation of art work more than leaving it mired in mystery. The Ghent Altarpiece (1432), by the Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck is one of the most stunning examples of oil painting in the world. And new technology, available freely online to study made my jaw drop.

The Ghent Altarpiece, opened. From Wikipedia.

When I was doing my fine arts undergrad, I remember discussion of how standing in front of the real painting, there’s almost an aura about them, like standing with a real person instead of a photograph. Technology, the image of an image, is pre-supposed to separate us from the real image. But sometime sit takes us closer.

I’ve never been to Europe (yet). Even once I one day make it there, it’s unlikely I’ll ever get as good a look at The Ghent Altarpiece as I now can from the internet.

A new project, called Closer to Van Eyck came online earlier this year. In brief, the site, coordinated by Ron Spronk of Queen’s University, contains incredibly high resolution images of the Ghent Altarpiece polyptych – and the zoomable macrophotography is complemented by views in infrared macrophotography, infrared reflectography and x-radiography.

Here’s a look at the crown of god , the macrophotography one step away from full zoom, and the infrared macrophotography to match:

Fig.1 Image credit: Closer to Van Eyck

Using these three other views can reveal more than just fine detail; clues to the techniques employed by the brothers can also appear, if you know what to look for. But I want to focus on what’s visible at high zoom under normal light. Let’s take a look at the glints in the jewels.

Reflected light is a tricky thing in painting.  There are some modern masters such as artist Jeff Hayes who spend years exploring the way light bounces off of surfaces, and how to re-create those effects using pigment and oil. In the image above, at first glance the Van Eycks seem to have simply used daubs of white paint for light reflections off of the jewels. Let’s take a closer look, at that main red jewel.

Fig 2.

Note: I’ve lowered the resolution in Photoshop to help the blog load quicker: for super-full-amazing detailedness, make sure to go to the actual site.

For the most part, the colour is white, possibly something with some zinc in it which tends toward the yellowish whites. The plainly yellow daubs around the pearls may have yellowed with age (linseed oil in particular yellows, darkens and becomes more transparent with age – a dark background under the white daubs would start to show through discolouring them further). This is armchair speculation on my part – an analysis of pigments used by the Van Eycks was also no doubt part of the restoration and preservation of the Closer to Van Eyck project.

On the right-side of the jewel, we can see a streak of an orangey red alongside a white streak. Although a somewhat rusty colour up close in fig.2, from a greater distance in fig.1, the white almost seems invisible, and we see a stronger, vivid orange glint on the right-hand side of the jewel. The rusty red + thin white streaks merge at that distance and appear as a brighter orange. Amazingly, at both distances, they seem realistic despite visible brushstrokes.

Zooming in on these glints in the Ghent can reveal further surprises. Modern Art Notes blogger Tyler Green reports on the discovery that one of the angels is sporting a brooch with a blue jewel, reflecting not just light, but a reflection of a complicated window frame from inside the chapel where it is installed which was likely painted after the rest of the painting was complete.

The colours employed in a jewel’s gleam also matter. Note the use of the three primary colours in the reflected gleams in this dark jewel at the center of Mary’s crown:

Fig 3. Click here for the ful res.

And from a distance…

Fig 4. Click here for the full res.

…our eye (and the camera’s lens) read the colour as white.

New technologies and investment into exploring and preserving fine art from centuries past yields not only new understanding, but also new wonder. The whole crew of the Closer to Van Eyck project and its support and the work by the Getty Foundation have raised the bar on this amazing work higher than seeing The Ghent Altarpiece solely in person ever could.

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Links:

• Closer to Van Eyck
• Getty Foundation press release (Thanks to Melissa Abraham of the Getty for getting in touch post-post!)
• The Ghent Altarpiece on Wikipedia
• The magic JPEGS of the Ghent Altarpiece by Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes

For these specimens to be prepared for display takes an enormous amount of work. There’s the making of display cases and mounts. The lighting and signage must be crafted. The specimens must be in good enough condition to survive the hot lights, heavy traffic, and potential damage being on display could introduce. And sometimes, they need to be spruced up a bit before going on display.

Fred Mullison, the fossil preparator in the Academy’s Vertebrate Zoology department (and the mentor who trained me to run Neil Shubin’s lab), is one such sprucer-upper. When it was decided that the extinct Irish elk the Academy had was to be prepared for display in The Academy at 200 exhibit, they quickly realized no self-respecting elk would appear in public without a full set of teeth. So if you’ve ever found yourself asking, “If I knew a toothless elk, what would I get it for its birthday?” ask no more. The answer is a set of dentures. (Aw, shucks! Really? You shouldn’t have!)

Shockingly, there are not many people trained in the fine art of making dentures for extinct elk. Luckily for our friend the elk, people like Fred Mullison are armed with a unique set of skills that includes a deep understanding of anatomy, an artistic eye for sculpting and modeling and the technical knowledge of the ways of molding and casting. Not to worry, you vain little elk. Fred’s gotchya covered; undoubtedly you will look smashing for the exhibit’s roll-out.

Shall we take a behind-the-scenes tour through the process? Fred was kind enough to provide me with extensive photographs and descriptions of his work. What follows is a photo essay based off a series of emails we exchanged the week of the exhibit’s opening. Enjoy!

This is the Academy’s darling fossil Irish elk. Looks pretty good for being 10,000-25,000 years old! (Photo by Fred Mullison, Academy of Natural Sciences)

Here you can see a closeup of the Irish elk’s maxilla before Fred got his hands on it. As you can see, his teeth are in rough shape. (Photo by Fred Mullison, Academy of Natural Sciences)

Mammal teeth are diagnostic, meaning you can pick up a mammal tooth from virtually any time period and hand it to an expert to ID with little other information. The Irish elk was originally determined to be an elk because of its teeth’s similarity to the modern elk, Cervus canadensis. As such, Fred felt confident using this modern elk skull as a basis for the reconstruction. (Photo by Fred Mullison, Academy of Natural Sciences)

If you’ve ever had a tooth pulled, you know how far your teeth’s roots extend into your jaw. Well, Irish elk are no exception, and to begin sculpting the dentures, Fred needed to construct a solid base for the dentures which would fit neatly into the fossil skull. He did so by filling the hollow tooth wells with Super Sculpey® clay and creating a flat pedestal (background) on which he would build the actual teeth (foreground). (Photo by Fred Mullison, Academy of Natural Sciences)

Then, using his extant Cervus Canadensis teeth as a model, Fred used Super Sculpey® clay to sculpt the actual teeth. (Photo by Ned Gilmore, Academy of Natural Sciences)

The same process is used for the teeth in the mandible. (Photo by Ned Gilmore, Academy of Natural Sciences)

After the Super Sculpey® clay is hardened in an oven, Fred refines the teeth using a small Dremel tool. (Photo by Ned Gilmore, Academy of Natural Sciences)

Adding the finishing touches to the elk teeth. (Photo by Ned Gilmore, Academy of Natural Sciences)

The elk’s teeth are ready to cast. (Photo by Fred Mullison, Academy of Natural Sciences)

Silicone rubber molds (blue material) are made from the Super Sculpey® models. Then the original models are removed from the molds and the polyester resin can be poured in to make the permanent dentures. Polyester resin, of the type used in boat and automobile repairs, is relatively easy to work with and very durable. It is lightweight, can be painted with any type of paint, and can be drilled, sanded, and glued, making it ideal for fossil replicas and reconstructions. (Photo by Fred Mullison, Academy of Natural Sciences)

The polyester dentures are checked for proper fit and can then be painted. For the base coat, Fred used a black spray acrylic enamel of the sort used in painting plastic hobby models. This creates a shadow effect in the recesses of the fossil teeth that give it an authentic look and help it match the real fossil. (Photo by Ned Gilmore, Academy of Natural Sciences)

The teeth are painted and the skull is ready for mounting. From start to finish, the whole process took 6 weeks of solid work. (Photo by Fred Mullison, Academy of Natural Sciences)

The Academy at 200: The Nature of Discovery will be on display through March 2013 as part of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University’s bicentennial celebration. In addition to the regular exhibit, each month the Academy is highlighting a different department by offering behind-the-scenes tours of the collections. April is highlighting the Mineralogy collection; May will focus on the Ewell Sale Stewart Library and Archives; June will be for Ornithology; and July for Herpetology and Mammalogy… Check with the Academy of Natural Sciences for the full schedule of tours (and say hi to Fred if you go this month – that’s him showing off the Mineralogy collection!).

Here’s Star Map, a new painting by Diana Sudyka.

Star Map © Diana Sudyka

About the image, Sudyka says, “Volunteering in the bird division of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, one day I overheard an ornithologist explain how some bird use the stars to navigate their migration routes. The phrase he used was ‘They are born with a map of the stars.’”

The first time I had seen artwork by Sudyka, she had made donations from sales of an excellent print of Charles Darwin in support of the H.M.S. Beagle Project.  Her work has been a delight to follow ever since.  Prints of Star Map are available in her online store.

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Links

• The Tiny Aviary – blog
• @tinyaviary on Twitter
• Online Shop – at Big Cartel. (Don’t miss her print, Yeti Drinks Tea, it’s excellent!)

Dinosaur Couture!

Should an illustration of a dinosaur skeleton be considered as functional as a pair of jeans?

Watching this TED Talk with Johanna Blakley recently discussing copyright and fashion, she points out that some creative industries have little or not copyright. The world of fashion. Automobile design. The tattoo design industry.  The reason, Blakley points out, is that when copyright laws were being written and precedents set, fashion was considered to be a utilitarian industry. Would you want to have to pay royalties to the inventor of the shirtsleeve-cuff, she asks?

This is different than artistic illustration or literary works by leaps and bounds.  Copyright in the arts is generally robust and people are very protective over their designs. For a quick recap of copyright, generally, under the Berne Convention any created artistic or literary work is under copyright to the creator the moment it is made. Ideas are not under copyright (“I have this idea for a statue using that big piece of Carrarra marble no one wants…”) but the finished works (“ta-da!  David!”) are.

Trademarks are something different altogether – they can be a logo, say, and Blakley points out how many fashion brands plaster their wares with the company logo. And of course, plenty of haute couture is much more artistic than functional.

I was considering this in the context of science illustration. Last year, before the Scientific American Blog Network launched, my co blogger Kalliopi Monoyios wrote an excellent piece about the Gregory S. Paul dinosaur skeleton controversy,  Art in the Service of Science: You Get What You Pay For. In brief, noted paleontology illustrator Gregory Paul posted a rant online about people mimicking his drawings of dinosaur skeletons, side view, imposed on a black silhouette of the living animal.

Kalliopi brought up an excellent point that dovetails nicely with  Johanna Blakley’s discussion. When describing another illustrator’s rendition of Paul’s style for a different fossil species, Kalliopi said,

“From a strict copyright perspective, this is illegal. Paul spent years developing this technique and his genius at combining disparate information into a clean, concise illustration should be rewarded with piles of work and mountains of cash (cue maniacal laughter, all the way to the bank.) From a scientific perspective, Paul invented a convention, and an invaluable one at that. It’s a convention that should be used widely to standardize the discourse that would otherwise be a jumble of hapless musings on fossil fragments scattered across the globe. Without convention, much information (and thus, progress) would be lost in the ensuing chaos.”

Kalliopi Monoyios, Guest Blog March 2011

It’s an excellent point: when does a scientific illustration –  edited for clarity, designed to convey information, reflecting real life and its explanatory theories – when does a scientific illustration become so useful, it crosses a threshold and should be considered as functional as fashion?  So functional that copyright law should (maybe) cease to matter in the face of scientific utility?

Interview with Tyler Keillor, Paleoartist

Paleoartist Tyler Keillor working on a reconstruction of Jane, a juvenile Tyrannosaur, 2005

How long have you been a paleoartist?
I’d been drawing dinosaurs and attempting to sculpt them even as a little kid. My early attempts were always frustrating, because I didn’t have the skills to create details, or knowledge of anatomy. But I had a workshop in my parents’ basement starting in about 7th grade, and they encouraged my experimentation with molding, casting, creating. Over my college years I developed more of the skills that I use today, in the pursuit of a special effects makeup career in film. But my experiences in the entertainment industry weren’t all I hoped for, so I came back to my earliest love of dinosaurs. I began honing my skills on personal paleoart projects, and reacquainting myself with the latest in paleontology in the mid-nineties. I guess you could say that one of my first official jobs as a paleoartist came in 1999 when I was working for the Field Museum of Natural History, in the Exhibition Department: I sculpted a maquette of Sue’s skeleton, as a conceptualization tool for planning the full size T-rex display. I created a few paleo-related models and exhibit pieces for the Field, but then moved on to working in Paul Sereno’s Fossil Laboratory at the University of Chicago in 2001. This is where I have had a chance to flourish as a paleoartist.

Reconstruction of Sarcosuchus hatchling by Tyler Keillor, 2002

What’s your background?
My initial training was all mad scientist type experiments, trial and error as a kid in my basement workshop at my folks’ house. I loved any kind of dinosaur or monster movie back then – any film with a stop-motion dinosaur, man-in-suit monster, or a puppet creature of some kind (way before CGI). I tried to replicate the creations I saw in movies and learn how to make things following Dick Smith’s Monster Makeup Handbook and Tom Savini’s Bizzaro. Those formative years gave me a feel for working with clay and plaster, liquid latex, glue guns, fake fur and plastic eyes, etc. I had a basement full of rubber monsters and zombies sitting in lawn chairs – always a hit at Halloween!

While attending Columbia College in Chicago, I pursued special effects more seriously, and was accepted into Dick Smith’s Advanced Professional Correspondence Course. I also began assisting Chicago area makeup artists, and working on film, theater, and TV projects. This might not seem relevant, however many of the same skills and techniques that I learned then help me even today. In particular, I remember a really big goal in creating any given prosthetic makeup was for it to look “real”. My peers and I would study the makeup effects in any film and look for bad edges (a sign of poor molding and casting); we’d critique the design or sculpting, and analyze the coloration. The goal was always to create as lifelike a character as possible, creating an illusion within the confines of the materials available (for example, foam latex prosthetic pieces are not translucent like real flesh, so skillful coloration is necessary to convey life to rubber). That mission to create as lifelike a character, creature, or sculpture is the same that motivates me today in creating paleosculptures.

Reconstruction of Herrerasaurus by Tyler Keillor, 2008

My varied portfolio and background also held weight with Paul Sereno when I eventually came to work for him, because he too has an art background. Since working for him, I’ve had the opportunity to continue experimentation with new and different materials and techniques for molding, casting, and sculpting. The fossil preparation that is a part of my job description is a skill that I learned “on the job” from lab manager Bob Masek – and it is something that I still learn more about all the time. While this isn’t really a part of the paleoart that I create, it nevertheless gives my artwork the authenticity and accuracy I’m interested in, as I become intimately familiar with the fossil specimens that I go on to recreate in the flesh.

When was the first time you realized you could combine science and art into a career? Was that always a goal of yours or was it a more organic evolution?
My path has had many twists and turns, so I did not have an initial goal of combining science and art. But these have always been twin interests of mine, and I loved both subjects throughout my schooling. My first attempts at paleoart (the personal projects) were much more art than science, because I really didn’t know enough about my subject matter. My work since 2001, after starting in Paul Sereno’s lab, has really demonstrated for me that I can indeed combine science and art into a career, and that there is a need for this type of artwork. Often a new discovery is incomplete, crushed, or otherwise visually difficult for the layman to understand at a glance. I’ve been able to help create models – both skeletal and flesh – to more readily convey the significance of discoveries to the public. And based upon several of the high profile projects I have worked on for Paul, I have started to get reconstruction assignments from other researchers and institutions, to help unveil their new discoveries as well.

Do you have a favorite project you’ve worked on? (pics, please!!)
The majority of my projects so far have represented new species, so each one has had its own very special set of challenges – artistic and technical – and so in their own ways each project became my favorite at the time I was working on it.

For example, Nigersaurus was a great project because that started with a very challenging skull reconstruction and then proceeded to a flesh head and neck. This sauropod skull is so alien compared to most other sauropods, that it took a great deal of time just to figure out how the disarticulated skull bones went back together, much less how they ever could have functioned. To top it off, most were so thin and delicate that the molding process would have pulverized them; instead we had to prototype casts from the CT data obtained from scans of these bones. Restoring the teeth was another challenge, because no other dinosaur has teeth packed in stacks growing out of a trough like that. There was some speculation involved in that skull reconstruction, but it was really constrained by the surrounding anatomy and other more completely known sauropod skulls, so in the end it is a very accurate model. One could not even attempt to sketch what the head of this dinosaur would have looked like until this skull model was completed first, because it really is such a strange species.

Reconstruction of Nigersaurus by Tyler Keillor, 2007

The flesh model was also full of challenges, like trying to figure out what was happening at the oral margins behind that anterior tooth row. The skull was not much of a guide, because it is built of such thin struts and doesn’t really adequately suggest an outline of the flesh-head. I looked at a lot of extant species for inspiration and reference, trying to make every millimeter of the flesh model based in part upon something that can be found in nature. After months and months of work, I think the skull and flesh models turned out great, and serve to well illustrate this very strange species.

Describe the roles of researcher and paleoartist in creating a flesh reconstruction. What does each bring to the table in your experience?
Part of the joy for me, in being a paleoartist, is to get to know and work with the specimens I’m “resurrecting”. In that regard, I try to inform myself as much as possible about the relevant literature, related species, attempts by other artists at similar dinosaurs, etc., so that I come to the table prepared to create a well-referenced and original work, and that I’m able to communicate with and understand the researcher. It’s great to have a plan, too, but one that is flexible, because of course the paleontologists have final say over how their specimens should be depicted. Sometimes I’ve worked with researchers who like a sketch, maquette, prototypes, lots of input and opportunity for corrections throughout the process. Others have given me general directions, and then let me have a bit more artistic freedom. I enjoy both types of collaborations. On the Tiktaalik project, I remember getting some very specific and detailed guidance from Ted Daeschler about how the series of bones behind the head should look, how much soft tissue should be obscuring them from view, etc., which was great and made the model more accurate.

Any artists/illustrators/sculptors inspire you?
I was most certainly first inspired by the Charles Knight murals I gazed upon at the Field Museum as a boy. I’m still inspired by the works of many of the film artists I both studied in my past and still admire today, like Ray Harryhausen, Rick Baker, the artists of Stan Winston Studio, Weta Workshop, ADI, there are too many to name! Similarly, I’ve been inspired by so many of the living legends of paleoart, like Mike Skrepnick, Mark Hallet, Greg Paul, John Sibbick, Douglas Henderson, Stephen Czerkas…there are so many that really have inspired me and continue to do so. An artist I’d like to mention in more detail is David Krentz, who among many other things (such as designing, producing and directing Discovery’s recent Dinosaur Revolution miniseries), is known for creating some beautiful bronze 1/18 scale dinosaur sculptures. David also works with the digital sculpting tool Zbrush, which he has used now to create some fantastically detailed and wonderfully evocative 1/72 scale dinosaur models, and some even smaller 1/144 scale – essentially prototyped in the real world from his digital sculpture, at a minute yet detail-rich scale that no human could ever create by hand using traditional methods. A few years ago David encouraged me to adopt Zbrush myself, and seeing his work and use of new technologies like this truly does inspire me!

Reconstruction of Rugops by Tyler Keillor, 2004

What’s the most indispensable tool in your studio?
I’d say my computer is the most indispensable tool! Even though I work with my hands, having a vast store of images and articles at my fingertips during the research stage of a project is so important. And while I’m working, I can snap a quick photo of a clay sculpture and do color mockups in Photoshop, get a sense of how the model will appear when printed as a photo, create a quick mirror-image view of the piece by flipping a photo left-for-right, etc. Also as a means of staying in touch with researchers, to show progress of a sculpture, to keep abreast of new discoveries, that kind of thing really is vital.

In your experience, did art school prepare you for the business end of making a career as an artist?
My experience in college didn’t really prepare me for the business of making a career as an artist. I’m very fortunate that I found full time employment at the University of Chicago, where I’m using my skills and interests as an artist. I’ve also made some good friends with other veteran paleoartists, and have received great advice from them on the business end of things, when it comes to my freelance work. The handbook “Copyrights, Contracts, Pricing & Ethical Guidelines for Dinosaur Artists and Paleontologists”
by Tess Kissinger is still a good guide for an artist looking for info on the business end of things.

Reconstruction of Sanajeh indicus by Tyler Keillor, 2010

If you could travel in time to any point in the universe’s history – forward or back – where would you go and what would you see/do?
As a lifelong dinosaur nut, I’d have to take a trip to the Mesozoic (just about anytime would be OK with me) to see for myself what these animals were like. I dream about dinosaurs sometimes, and it’s always with great longing that I awake and can’t quite remember what they really looked like, only to realize that we’ll never really know… in a way that motivates my work: to try to honor these magnificent creatures and give them a face once again.

Anything you’d like to plug?
Please check out my website www.TylerKeillor.com to see more of my work. [KM note: his videos are especially interesting!]
I’ve also created the reconstructions for a few new creatures, for papers that should be coming out soon from Paul Sereno at the University of Chicago, so stay tuned!
I’m also contributing photos of my work and process to a trade book that will explore paleoart…I’ll keep you posted!
Finally, I’d like to mention a special thanks to my wife Kari for her support, encouragement, and patience as I’ve followed my paleo-passion – I couldn’t be doing any of this without her!

And just in case you think Tyler is all biz, all the time, I present to you... Tiktaalik takes Grise Fiord by Tyler Keillor

Here are the answers from a spectrum of science-artists.

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“Most of what I sell online is original watercolor paintings and collages. I think that makes it a little less risky for me, as far as having my images ripped off, because it’s very hard for someone to recreate the look and the texture of an original using an image from the web. But I know that someone could take one of my designs and put it on a t-shirt or a notebook.
On the other hand, I’ve been featured on lots of blogs and gotten show opportunities because people have seen my work online. The bottom line for me is that having lots of pictures of my work on the web has been worth the risk. So far, anyway!”

-Michele Banks of Artologica

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I place a value on the work I create, therefore I believe it’s worthwhile to do what I can to protect it from infringement. There are a few websites I use to promote my business, so it’s necessary for me to put samples of my work online. I make them relatively small and/or I place a watermark on them. I’m well aware that it’s not a perfect system, but in my mind doing nothing to protect my images might indicate that I do not value them and it would be a disservice to the clients who commissioned them. Some might perceive that trying to protect one’s work online is futile, but I wholeheartedly believe that just because an endeavor is perceived as futile doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the attempt.

-Emily Damstra of Science Illustration by Emily S. Damstra

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By all means use my photographs! They don’t do anyone any good just sitting on my hard drives. But be respectful of the fact they take time and money to create. At least have the decency to inform people where they came from. And if you are using the photographs to make money, I deserve some of it. After all, these photographs would not exist, and could not exist, if I was unable to earn a basic living.

-Alex Wild of Alex Wild Photography

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Every time an artist puts their work online, it’s a trade-off. Sure, it could be ripped off. However, in science-art, the audience-niche can be very small. I often paint fossilized winged trilobites on stone, and at the moment the audience who enjoys these paintings is not huge.

A niche audience has benefits. By blogging, tweeting and being a part of the science social media world, I gain community, friends, fans and clients. The benefit of community is that its members will also help to protect you and your artistic work.

Allowing artwork to be shared under Creative Commons is essential to community-building. It helps an artist gain recognition among people who enjoy the artwork, growing the community of people who respect your contributions.

I put my name and url on my artwork; I put my name in the image filenames. From my experience, the artists in the greatest danger are those who’s online presence is obscure. Engage, and the community grows along with your career, as well as being half the fun.

-Glendon Mellow of Art in Awe of Science

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Definitely post your artwork on the web, as publicity is always a good thing. The only true theft to be worried about is a publisher sniping it in my opinion, but this is easy to prevent by simply uploading a lower resolution version of the piece requiring a real publication to approach you for a higher quality version. As for people cross-posting your work, I won’t worry as much about a lack of credit (though that is annoying), but rather the purposes and use of the work is often more of a problem in my opinion (in my case creationists). To make sure unwanted entities aren’t using your work it is definitely a good idea to use Tineye.

-Craig Dylke of ART Evolved

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The benefits of sharing and promoting my work online far outweigh the potential losses of someone stealing an image off my web page for profit. Additionally, I don’t know of a way to protect your art online without seriously damaging the presentation. Watermarks, for example, prevent any real appreciation of the work. So my best advice is to upload images that look great in your online portfolio, but are not hi-res, with your url small and tastefully in the corner. In the very rare case that Big Company Inc. steals your image for their Big Marketing Campaign then I’m sure you can find a lawyer happy to help you both out.

-Marc Scheff of  marcscheff.com

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If by “protecting artwork online” you mean preventing someone from gaining access to your web based images – you can’t.
All of the silly right-click defeating JavaScripts and clear GIF overlays in the world won’t deter a simple third party screen capture utility. A graphics professional such as myself can extract images from Zoomify boxes and Flash files and, to a large extent, even remove watermarking.
The only way watermarking can prevent image use is if it’s so onerous as to render your image unusable for anything, including promoting your art. Keeping images too small to reproduce elsewhere likewise makes them too small to be useful for showcasing your work. Invisible embedded watermarks, which add a layer of “noise”, can degrade image quality as well.
If your work is in print, anyone with access to a $50 scanner with a de-screening option can make a much higher resolution copy of your images than you are ever likely to put online.

The single best way to protect your images is to register them with the Copyright Office (they don’t have to be published, you can register an “unpublished collection” of multiple images).
For image files posted online, a simple copyright line and the addition of your domain name, placed on the image in a way that doesn’t detract from the effective presentation of your art, increase the chances for image credit to find its way back to you if the image gets reused, and provide the ability to say legally that the initial version of the image was identified as yours.
It may also be worth adding your domain name to the filename of the image (people are lazy, and will likely just use your original image file, unless you force them into a screen capture), e.g. “dinosaurcartoons_com_600.gif” (extra dots “.” are not allowed in a web  filename).
If you need to be absolutely certain your images are safe, put them in a drawer and don’t let anyone see them.

-Charley Parker of Dinosaur Cartoons

My thanks to everyone above who gave us their thoughts!

How do you protect your artwork online?  Answer in the comments below!

Spring by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1563, oil on wood). In my opinion one of the historical precursors to science-art and scientific illustration

Jean Giraud (Moebius) 1938-2012 – Lines and Colors

Ralph McQuarrie, 1929-2012 – Lines and Colors

Calling all GNSI Illustrators - Britt Griswold, Guild of Natural Science Illustrators

Why hire a professional illustrator? – News from the Studio of Emily Damstra

Bringing Plants to the People – Carol Gracie, ArtPlantae Today

Evolutionary Biology in Video Games? – Biocreativity

Keeping Clam – Weapon of Mass Imagination

Marc Quinn: All of Nature Flows Through Us – Vanessa Ruiz, Street Anatomy

Loggerheads – Laughing Mantis

Best rejection letter ever – Artologica

Thought Forms – Sticks & Stones, Eggs & Bones

Creative Stealing – Annette Heist, Science & the Arts

A couple of shows, a couple of bats – A Curious Bestiary

Pachyrhinosaurus Size Chart – The CAW Box

Allosaurus Science Ink – The Flying Trilobite

iPalaeontology – the iPad as a research tool – Palaeo Illustrata

Prints and Posters – Sci-ence

Pilot Whales in Watercolor – Omegafauna

SONSI Exhibit 2012 – Southern Ontario Nature & Science Illustrators

Sword Fern at Muir Woods – Walk About

3D Robot Dinosaurs! – drip

ART Evolved is a no-Pin zone, sadly… – Craig Dylke, ART Evolved

Cedar Waxwing – Xanthopan

Displaying stuff at the nanolevel at museums – Medical Museion

Transform Your iPhone Into a Microscope – Just Add Water – Compound Eye

Sketching Geckos in the Museum of Science – Tricia’s Obligatory Art Blog!

AI: Emoticons are Art – Mad Art Lab

Science as mystical connections – only art dares! – Alchemy

* * *

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.

Put your feet up, make yourself an espresso and enjoy the science-art on the links above.

Click here for recent Scumbles and  here for even earlier Scumbles.

“But all sites are the same”

Since Kalliopi and I wrote about our views of Pinterest’s Terms of Service, I’ve noticed a common misconception in many blogs, tweets and comments.

Techdirt:

“For Those Freaking Out Over Pinterest’s Terms Of Service, Have You Stopped Using Every Other Internet Site Yet?”

Mashable:

“…this type of provision is actually very common, and to a certain extent, is necessary for any social media site to run.”

Copyright Librarian:

“ These elements of Pinterest’s TOS are common to just about ALL USER-GENERATED-CONTENT SITES’ TOSs (though I’ll admit that Pinterest is somewhat unique (and kinda weirdly archaic in a couple of places) in their specific language and points.)”

@inkylaurens:

“Can see how this is scary but sadly these days its just normal RT @kzelnio: Pinterest’s Terms of Service http://bit.ly/FQLMZO by @symbiartic“

Symbiartic Commenter jesskupferman:

“With Pinterest, it is NO DIFFERENT. They can do what they want with the content. Not agreeing to terms like these means you don’t get to use neat stuff on the Internet.”

And on.

Some of these sites even post the Terms of Service from sites like Tumblr or discuss Facebook’s ToS with an eye that they are the same. One of the reasons I singled out the “sell” and “otherwise exploit” portions of Pinterest’s terms is because although they are small words in a long document, they are hugely different and significant.

Sites like G+, Twitter, Facebook, deviantArt and Tumblr do take broad licence to modify and otherwise re-purpose content.  Much of the reasons for that is it’s a way of keeping up with technology.  Most social media sites have a mobile version, and these provisions are a way of addressing alterations to content for a different format. As I said in The Promise and Perils of Pinterest, there’s a lot to like about Pinterest – and as with any website, content creators, whether writers, artists or podcasters have to do some risk assessment to see if putting each piece of content online is worth it. Risk assessment comes with being a creator whether you’re showing your work to an editor, a colleague, or the whole legion of intertubes.

Let me be clear: G+, Twitter, Facebook, deviantART, Flickr and Tumblr (as well as many many other social media and image-sharing sites) do not claim to right to “sell” and “otherwise exploit” your content. The idea that this was some sort of stock, boilerplate Terms of Service is wrong.

Pinterest responds…quietly

I indicated in my previous post’s comments that I had been contacted by a community manager at Pinterest; the initial answers were contradictory enough to cause me to delete the content of my own Pinterest boards. Later I was contacted by a PR representative for the company. It was indicated by the community manager and PR rep that Pinterest was looking to change the Terms of Service and remove the “sell” portion. Frustratingly, this was all to be off the record. Meanwhile, Kalliopi’s post rocketed up a few thousand Facebook ‘likes”, hundreds of tweets sharing our posts were retweeted, Nieman Journalism Lab caught sight of the issue and the Huffington Post carried Kalliopi’s analysis of the Pinterest Terms of Service.

Pinterest Changes Terms of Service

As of Friday 23rd of March 2012, Ben Silbermann and his team announced on their blog, among other changes:

“Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for us to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.”

The new Terms of Service will officially take effect April 6 2012 and Pinterest will finally actually be similar to other social media and image sharing sites.

For all the people who wrote blog posts, tweets, emails and comments about Pinterest and their over-reaching Terms, you knew it can make a difference. Speak up!

For the people who posted the “but all sites are the same” sentiments, even if that were true, does that mean you have to roll over and take it?  Most social media savvy sites like Pinterest do actually listen to their users – they understand the two-way street.

Will I restore content to my boards?  We all have several days to read over the new Terms of Service and figure that out.

And Pinterest?  Thanks for listening.

By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.

My co-blogger, Glendon, has expounded on why the word “sell” in their terms of service unsettles him. I think there are many, many equally ominous words in that paragraph. Here’s what scares me and why:

“IRREVOCABLE”
Let’s just assume for a moment that Pinterest users are posting their own content and not infringing upon others’ copyright (that’s a BIG assumption, btw. From Pinterest’s about page: “Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web… People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.” Last I checked, everything in my home, in my wedding, and… wait for it… on the web were not created by me.) An irrevocable license means the images that you have posted cannot ever be unposted. You had copyright to the images (of course), you read their TOS (yeah, yeah, yeah), and you decided to share your rights with Pinterest. You can’t change your mind. You can’t take it back. It’s irrevocable.

“PERPETUAL”
Did I mention you can never take it back? Never.

“TRANSFERABLE”
Pinterest states in its FAQs that they’re not currently making money but that they are building value for investors and themselves. From their lips to your eyeballs:

Right now, we are focused on growing Pinterest and making it more valuable. To fund these efforts, we have taken outside investment from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

While much of the buzz surrounding Pinterest’s value has centered around their ability to monetize the referral traffic which currently exceeds that from Twitter, I have a different perspective. What I see Pinterest doing is employing you (without pay, mind you) to amass a giant library of original content for them. I may be wrong, but I suspect this library is the hedge against the referral model working out. And you can bet that if their library gets big enough, they will have some pretty serious offers from some major players. And guess which word in their TOS will allow the buyer to transfer that valuable library from Pinterest to the next company? You got it: “transferable.” That’s value for shareholders and investors. Not for you.

“ROYALTY-FREE”
What was I saying about value for investors and not you? “Royalty-free” officially cuts you out of the equation.

aaannnnnd, the Laundry List: “SUBLICENSE, USE, COPY, ADAPT, MODIFY, DISTRIBUTE, LICENSE, SELL, TRANSFER, PUBLICLY DISPLAY, PUBLICLY PERFORM, TRANSMIT, STREAM, BROADCAST, ACCESS, VIEW, AND OTHERWISE EXPLOIT”
Licensing, distributing, selling, performing. These are all ways that people make money off of creative content. I am an artist. I paint a perty picture. You buy it from me for $500. Hey, that’s pretty good, right? Say I spent 40 hours on that painting – at $500 sale price, that’s $12.50/hr or $26,000/year if I can keep creating and selling one painting a week for a year. $26,000/year minus housing, healthcare (most artists are self-employed), daycare, insurance, food, etc. doesn’t leave much wiggle room.

Lucky for me, when you buy that painting, you own the original, but I retain all other rights. So if I want to sell prints or mugs or t-shirts, I can. I can also license the image to a book or magazine or General Mills if I want, to plaster on their cereal boxes. There are a number of ways I can use my creative content to ensure that I make a living wage. If I rely on the sales of my original paintings I may only make $26K a year, but if I can sell that image 20 more times as a $50 print, all of a sudden my hourly is $37.50 with a projected annual earning of $78,000. That seemingly innocent laundry list of “sell” terms is the difference between starving artist and confident, successful creative. Value what you produce, people. What you produce has value.

Now before you get all antsy-pantsy and tell me that I’m a bitter old artist who hates the internet and just “doesn’t get it,” let me be the first (tenth? thousandth?) person to say that Pinterest has great potential. There is value in having your work picked up and promoted by thousands of adoring internet fans. But as a creative, Pinterest’s terms of service don’t mirror the intentions of users who pin out of a desire to support creatives they have “discovered.” If I enter into a binding legal agreement with Pinterest over the use of my images, I want to know exactly how they plan to monetize them and how the use of my work will ultimately benefit and support me and my dependents. Pinterest, on the other hand, wants to claim as many rights as they can and be as vague as possible about how they might use them in the future, because frankly, they don’t know how they might use them. They are an evolving company and will go where the market takes them. Just make no mistake – any billion-dollar deal they enter into will not line your pockets. Unless you’re an investor.

Incidentally, to their credit Pinterest provides a bit of code you can use in the head tag of your webpage that will theoretically prevent users from pinning your stuff (I say “theoretically” because it’s difficult to test if you don’t have a Pinterest account). Since it’s a bit buried in their site, I’m providing it here, although if you’d prefer to get it from the source, by all means (go to About > Help > Getting Started):

What if I don’t want images from my site to be pinned?
We have a small piece of code you can add to the head of any page on your site:

<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />

When a user tries to pin from your site, they will see this message:
“This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”

For another point of view on Pinterest’s Terms of Service see my co-blogger Glendon Mellow’s Symbiartic post, “The Promise and Perils of Pinterest”

Even making this image for this blog post violates Pinterest's rules.

The Promise – a bold credited, copyright future

Initially, I was enamored by Pinterest, the image sharing and collecting site.  It’s like a visual scrapbook of all the things you love online, and does what Tumblr has neglected to do, and requires a link back to the source of each image.

Amazing. A boon for artists, illustrators and photographers, as well as educators. Science educators can organize class images for students to reference, the image makers get a link back to their sites, helping get their names out there and possibly further exposure and perhaps paying gigs.

Win-win all around, right?

Pinterest even goes so far as to credit the two designers who created their two logos (that I have crudely satirized at left) – Juan Carlos Pagan and Michael Deal.  This is the type of thing as an illustrator online that I really like: respect and shareability.  Pinterest has a lot of vision and wants to give credit where credit is due.

The Problem – why you’re using Pinterest wrong

It’s likely if you’re on Pinterest, you’re using it wrong. I did when I started. I was envisioning a Symbiartic Pinterest board, all the images Kalliopi and I have mustered together on our less than 1-year old blog complete with handy links promoting the visionaries that are exploring the intersection of science and art.

But the problem is, I didn’t have permission from the artists to show off their work on Pinterest. Kalliopi and I are very careful to ask before posting (one of the reasons we do not post with massive frequency – we have to wait on replies). Perhaps, I thought, I could begin to ask artists when I approach them about a Symbiartic feature if they’re willing to go on a Symbiartic Pinterest board as well?

You see, the problem with Pinterest is that right in the Terms of Service, they state you,

“…are the sole and exclusive owner of all Member Content…”

and you,

“agree not to do any of the following: Post, upload, publish, submit, provide access to or transmit any Content that: (i) infringes, misappropriates or violates a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other intellectual property rights…”

So ask yourself: how many images have you posted on Pinterest that you have permission for? How many are available under Creative Commons Licences or expired copyrights? Have you looked? Are you aware that you’re on the hook (not Pinterest) if someone is suing for violations?

The explosive popularity of Pinterest has rested on people making boards using boards to plan lessons, gather neat-o foltsam from the internet, design dream homes and wardrobes, share jokes, share inspirations and do it all without asking for permission to post those images.

Now, this isn’t the worst thing ever to happen.  Most of the internet relies on sharing, mashing, collaborating and the creativity of free information, including images. I’m sure IKEA or Marvel Comics are not too bothered that their wares are pinned on countless Pinterest boards – it’s free advertising spreading their brands. Even many illustrators won’t mind the extra notoriety and blog traffic they can leverage coming from those handy links-to-the-source Pinterest expects. GeekMom outlines a few ways you can try to adhere to a type of Pinterest etiquette.

But it is interesting that Pinterest’s current growth is resting on increasing violations of copyright.

The Peril – what is it Pinterest wants to sell?

Shortly after I posted on my personal blog, The Flying Trilobite about why I liked Pinterest, Kalliopi and a few other illustration colleagues got into a discussion with me (on the blog and G+) about one weird little clause in Pinterest’s Terms of Service. Typically, I read these very carefully.  I admit, I missed one tiny word this time around.
“Sell“.
Pinterest states:

“By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.” Emphasis mine.

Problematically in the same paragraph, Pinterest states: “Cold Brew Labs does not claim any ownership rights in any such Member Content”.

So which is it?  Do they claim ownership to the content or not?  And what are they planning to sell, anyway?  I suspect it’s selling the themes and content of the boards to advertisers – let’s say they notice an increase in the frequency of boards that feature a new teen pop star, they could potentially sell that information to a record label and make a deal for more advertising. Much like Facebook and Google will do with information culled from online profiles.

Or perhaps, something similar to that Twitpic clause that was quietly changed and allowed Twitpic to sell user’s photos to news services without the photographers seeing a dime or even notification. If that’s the case though, why isn’t  Pinterest cracking down more on copyright violations?  You’d think if the plan was to sell to affiliates, more diligence in keeping everyone’s boards clear of images that could land them in legal hot water would be on the agenda.

So potentially they could be planning a line of coffee table books based on popular board topics (“Inspiring Gardens” from Pinterest Press anyone?). Or maybe t-shirts of hipster cartoons. I dunno. We don’t know.

I sent an email and some tweets to Pinterest a month ago asking about these precise issues.  Haven’t heard anything so far.

So when am I deleting my Pinterest board?

That’s right. I still have one. I like to adopt and try out most online services as they roll out to help further my illustration career. You go where the customers and fans are. So for me, it’s a case of risk assessment: is it likely Pinterest is going to suddenly sell off a surreal portrait of Darwin or some winged trilobites to some news or marketing affiliate? and make more money from it than I ever have?   Or will being on Pinterest drive even more people to my portfolio and sites than ever before?  Almost half my online traffic comes from Twitter, so perhaps Pinterest could tip me into sustainability as an artist.

Pinterest is listening, in part because of a high-profile story about a lawyer deleting her boards that was carried by the Wall Street Journal. The lawyer, Kirsten Kowalski, says the Pinterest CE Ben Silbermann and she have had a progressive discussion about it, according to a story posted at the Washington Post online yesterday. But still no word about what “sell” means.

I’m going to ask again, and give them another couple of weeks before I delete my boards. I think.

Edit: They did respond with off-the-record comments.  I deleted the content of all my boards.

Related links:
Pinterest gets right what Tumblr got wrong – on The Flying Trilobite by Glendon Mellow
Pinterest Terms of Service: Word by Terrifying Word – here on Symbiartic by Kalliopi Monoyios.
Pinterest Terms of Service Link Round-Up – on The Flying Trilobite by Glendon Mellow.

Bike made from smog © Kim Abeles

The plates are part of “the invisible connectedness of things,” a multimedia solo exhibit that combines a wall of video, large-scale photos, puzzles, paintings, and the pollution-coated plates to capture the multifaceted ways in which air pollution affects people and ecosystems. The exhibit, commissioned by EcoArts Connections, is on display until August 8, 2012 at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History with satellite exhibits at the National Center for Atmospheric Research andAir Care Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

Featured prominently in Kim’s photo and video pieces are close images of lichens, the green-yellow-gray crust often found covering rocks and tree trunks. Because these fungi and their symbiotic alga or cyanobacteria are often long lived and exposed to the elements, they collect air pollution over time. And because they are slow growing, pollutants become concentrated within the lichens. Kim’s digital images combine lichens with some of the sources of air pollution – people and their cars and trucks, in particular.

© Kim Abeles

Combining art and science, Kim’s work is part of the conversation about air quality. In her presentation at the exhibit opening, Kim said that art and science aren’t that different. They are both about collecting, organizing, and presenting data, she noted. They are both about curiosity, and they both involve a willingness to mess up and get dirty.

About the author:

Lisa Gardiner (@lisagard2) is a Science Writer and Content Creator at Spark, UCAR Science Education (@SparkSciEd) in Boulder, Colorado, where she develops resources for the public, students, and teachers to learn about the Earth and the research going on at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. She has a background in geology, ecology, and paleontology – receiving her B.A. from Smith College and her Ph.D. from University of Georgia. She is currently an M.F.A. candidate in nonfiction writing at Goucher College. Lisa started Citizen Science Buzz, a TalkingScience blog, to share stories about how the public is getting involved with science and she is a contributing blogger for SciStarter. She is the author and illustrator of several books and articles about science for children and creates mixed-media paintings that link nature and geography.

Science Links:

• Spark, UCAR Science Education
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Talking Science
• SciStarter

Art Links:

• Lisa Gardiner Illustration
• The Quiet Woods

Caudipteryx © David Orr

Q: How do you fill a dinosaur exhibit with feathers?

A: Put out an open call to the blogosphere’s paleo artists.

Talos © Emily Willoughby. This slightly injured troodontid illustration was originally commissioned for a paper available to read at PLoS ONE.

ART Evolved is a paleo-themed group art blog created by educators Craig Dylke and Peter Bond that I’ve had the pleasure of being involved in since its inception 4 years ago this month. One of the most popular features are the Time Capsule galleries: themed, open-to-everyone paleo-art galleries. They’ve ranged from ceratopsians to paleo-environments to pop culture to a special “pink dino” gallery that raised money for breast cancer research.

Sometimes the submissions can be busy, others times slight: however, the recent Feathered Dinosaur gallery garnered over 70 submissions, including ones from both Kalliopi and myself.

The diversity of the ones here are just to whet your appetite.  Head over to ART Evolved and check out the amazing feathered dinos!

Raptor PSA © Tricia Arnold

The next Time Capsule Gallery will be a tribute to Dan Varner – submissions to ART Evolved can be directed to artevolved@gmail.com .

The River King © Sean Craven

Science-art can take us to surprising places. It’s not always the product of a lab or research, but the seeds of understanding can have a large impact on different facets of culture.  It’s one of the ways we know that science is woven into all of our lives, and not just kept in the gee-whiz box on the shelf.

Today, I present an interview with two artists from non-science backgrounds, both of whom have an affinity for bones.  Bones are culturally loaded artifacts of lives lived, of the macabre, of lost chances. I’ve known and been a fan of these two artists for years, one in real life and the other online, and I’m excited they’ve agreed to share their work and thoughts here on Symbiartic.

Introducing Sean Craven and Holly Gilmour.

- -

Hello Sean, Hello Holly! Thanks for agreeing to this emailed-chat.  Please introduce yourselves.

 

Sean Craven, Renaissance Oaf

Sean: My name is Sean Craven.  I’m a writer, artist, and performer. I’ve spent years working in the underground press and am now attempting to crawl out into the light. I blog about my life and art at Renaissance Oaf.  While I’ve struggled with the problem of picture-making since childhood, I began seriously studying art at Santa Rosa Junior College under Maurice Lapp in 1987, when I was twenty-two. I’ve continued throughout my life, taking courses at Laney Junior College, Studio 7 in Oakland, the San Francisco Computer Arts Institute, and most recently Berkeley City College. I’ve lived in charming-but-embarrassing Berkeley, California for the last twenty-three years.

Hollu Gilmour behind one of her creations.

Holly: My name is Holly Gilmour, I am an illustrator,sculptor and seamstress (and throw in a pinch of make-up artist and photographer). You can follow my blog here. I have been interested in art since I was just a kid back in the early 80′s, getting a lot of my inspiration from old movies and books. I graduated from Sheridan College in 2004 and spent the rest of my time having art shows and attending crafter sales in Toronto, Canada.

Currently I am living in rural Ontario befriending many small woodland animals and practising my birdcalls…ok not really.

Before I lived in Toronto I grew up in a small town 3 hours east of Toronto.

What started your interest with depicting bones and skeletons? Is there something about making the image that’s important to you, instead of referencing photos?
Holly: We were surrounded by farms and country side. My interest in bones and skeletons come from the animals that would live in these areas. You would always find little mouse bones or other little animal skeletons in the woods. That always made me think of little stories about the animals that those bones belong to. I am currently working on a series called “The Bone Collectors“. Little spirits that go around the woods gathering the bones of the animals who lived there.

Bone Collector © Holly Gilmour

 

Sean: It began with my first drawing class. Once we’d achieved a reasonable level of draftsmanship, our instructor brought out a box full of human skulls. Complexity, symmetry, and organic flow made them the most engaging objects I’d drawn up to that point, difficult but not impossible. There’s a sense of honor about doing some subjects justice. That these skulls were once parts of people, worthy of affection and respect, demanded a higher level of artistry than I’d been motivated to achieve before.

Since my surrealist works referenced in this article are initially assembled from photographs, it might be good to point out that what I do here is influenced by the culture of appropriation. I’m using the techniques a lot of people use to create collages, posters, and LOLcats. But rather than appropriate the photographs I work with, I take them myself to fit a preconceived composition, and instead of collage, I try for montage.

Working with photographs has been an unexpected boon in many ways – as an example, I learned more about light in the few months it took me to do the initial set of images than I’d learned in twenty years of art study.

Skullblossom © Sean Craven

Sean is a writer of unusual and science fiction, and Holly an illustrator (I hesitate to call you a cartoonist since you don’t work in sequential narratives).  Do bones and skeletons symbolize anything in your artwork?  Is grappling with human mortality a part of the work?

Sean: The Bonelands depicted in these images represent post-traumatic stress disorder as much as mortality. They’re a landscape shaped by the emotional response to violence, specifically the Civil War, but that’s a stand-in for institutionalized violence in general. It’s a carrion world being gradually reclaimed by the inevitable forces of life.

Holly: I have always been fascinated with mortality. That started at
a very young age, not sure why. I  definitely think that it helps fuel my imagination.
My interest always tend to lean towards creepy and dark.

Bride and Doooom © Holly Gilmour

Each of you has online galleries or blogs. What made you decide to take your images online? Is feedback helpful?

Sean: Putting art online seems like a natural first step in introducing one’s work to the world. And while feedback is helpful, I’ve found I need an audience to work at my best. If I work for myself, I drift from one technical challenge to another. If I work for others, I have to communicate. It’s as if the work is a string. If it’s just me holding onto it, it lies there, limp. But if someone grabs hold of the other end, it pulls taut.

Holly: Online is the best way to promote yourself, Especially if you are self employed. Feedback is always great, although I usually get that from friends and family. Its nice to share your work with the rest of the world and that gives me a lot of inspiration.  Meeting people who have similar interest, etc etc.

Do you foresee or have you found that your paintings have informed your research or other artwork in some way? (Holly, for you is it part of an aesthetic. You’re not exactly goth, but…)

Sean: It’s not something you’re supposed to admit, but my art is strongly literary. These prints have two separate literary influences. The black-and-white versions of these images accompany the fiction published in Swill magazine. The stories are not considered while the images are being made – that it’s possible to match images to stories and enhance both is a pleasant mystery.

The seminal influence is my recently-completed novel. Deep in the writing process, my concepts and imagery became predictable. So I lay down in a quiet room with my eyes covered until I began to see things. I rendered these visions as prints. Once I incorporated those images into the novel, the story began to provoke prints directly. It developed into a complicated feedback cycle, and the fictional world defined itself over the course of a four-year public conversation between my art and my writing.

Holly: It has a lot to do with aesthetic, I am heavily influenced by what I watch, read and listen too.  Fashion, movies, songs.  Like I mentioned earlier, anything creepy and dark seems to tickle my fancy.  I find even just looking at Gothic Lolita girls online for half an hour gives me a lot of inspiration.

Self-Portrait © Holly Gilmour

Do you have a favourite medium to work with?

Holly: Gouache! I love the stuff! ‘Time to time I pull out the acrylics. 

Sean: Well, my favorite mediums would be graphite and the computer. I don’t paint. I fight with paint. Colored pencil is limited and laborious. The sound of pastels against paper makes my flesh creep. And so on. But pencil and charcoal are simple extensions of my hand, requiring no thought. And the very first time I used a first-generation Wacom tablet, I knew I’d found my medium. I am a digital artist.

The Canyon © Sean Craven

Tell us about the image that’s made the most impact.

Sean: The Kicker has gotten around more than any other image from the Bonelands. It started off as the cover for the third issue of Swill, was placed in an art show at Berkeley City College, was reproduced in a student newspaper as part of the promotion for the show, and due to personal requests, it’s also on three different kitchen walls.

(It also inspired a fight scene in the novel.)

The Kicker © Sean Craven

Holly: My most “famous” piece of art would be my Vampire Jelly Donut and Bride and Doooom (above).  Vampire Jelly Donut always makes me giggle but I’m proud of my Bride and Doooom, that piece got me really inspired to keep going with the skull people.

Vampire Jelly Donut © Holly Gilmour

Although each of you is exploring images of skeletons and bones, I don’t see anything gruesome or horrific in your work.  Is that a conscious decision?

Holly: There was a short period of time where I experiment with more gruesome looking pieces. None of it was documented, I’m not even sure if those piece are around still. My work has been described as Gothic Hello Kitty. Sometimes there is a bit of blood, but usually I hear “oh its so cutesy creepy!”,hahaha.

Sean: I think there are specific images that do have some horror to them, but for the most part, I was aiming for a sense of contemplation more than anything else. Quiet, vast, enclosed. The bones aren’t there to be scary; it’s the implied space between them I’m concerned with. The juxtaposition of emotionally charged complex objects helps the viewer create an emotionally resonant space in their mind, one that harmonizes with some of my states of thought.

The Gates of Ivory © Sean Craven

Where do you go to look for references?

Sean: My wife uses bones as decorative elements in her garden, and her plants also play a strong role in these images. I gather broken bits of machinery and electronics and scatter them around my studio. That’s how I start – I look around the house until I see the other world.

The Craven family garden.

Karen gets most of her bones at yard sales (this should tell you something about Berkeley), but I’ve gotten in the habit of nabbing any carrion that crosses my path. Got a lovely fox skull and skunk skull that way. I’m still wondering what happened to the baby raccoon I found – I was going to use it in a series to be called The Exhumation of the Boy King, but some animal, probably another raccoon, stole the body from our compost bin before it had sufficiently decayed.

Holly:  In the days before the Internet, I got a lot of my ideas from movies and illustrations. Which I still do, but the Internet helps me find more of it.  Like when I was a kid I would get a lot of inspiration from movies like Dark Crystal and Return to Oz.  And A LOT of books like Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz series.
As for reference, my bones and skulls are loosely based on real anatomy. My bones are super simplified and not technical at all.

Skull 2 © Holly Gilmour

Why or how did you get into this field?  What do you hope to do with your work?

Skull Doll © Holly Gilmour

Holly: I have always been creative, recently I was going through all my old report cards from grade school. Every single report card said the same thing. Satisfactory grades in  everything but Art and Drama. I always had top marks in the arts. So when it came time for me to think about a career I didn’t really have a hard time deciding what direction I wanted to go in. As long as I’m being creative. I enjoy working with my hands and hope one day to do more sewing and sculpting. I love toy making and costumes, so I have been pointing myself more in that direction lately.

Sean:  I was pulled in by necessity. I was asked to illustrate Swill, and after I used up my old work, I had to do new work that was both presentable and quick to produce. I’d always thought of myself as primarily a draftsman, but the time constraints made it impossible for me to use an illustrative approach. I turned to photographs and scans, figuring it would be easy enough to generate quick compositions.

It didn’t work out that way. Rather than filling pages, I found myself emotionally invested in the images. I wasn’t just illustrating; I’d graduated to something I regard as real art. The followup series to The Bonelands, Seven Views of the Downtown Area, includes much less skeletal imagery, but contains a much richer level of interior content.

I’m tentatively exploring the fine arts scene. I’ve been in a couple of shows, talked to a couple of gallery owners. My goal is to produce one show from the art previously done for Swill.

Then I want to try and work outside the range of traditional printmaking. I want to use my prints as the basis for work that borders on the sculptural. I work digitally. I don’t own a color printer, so I rarely print my work. When I do? It’s exciting, but the print feels too small or limited, too flimsy, too cheap to feel like ‘real’ art to me. It’s not like working with a press and plates; a machine does all the work.

I want to do something more substantial. More like ‘real’ art. My current works are rendered as vector rather than raster images, so they can be outputted at any given size without loss of resolution. The images could be fed into laser cutters, or printed onto slabs of Lucite, or used as templates for molding concrete. This is extremely tentative, and I don’t know enough about the real-world possibilities to make serious plans. We shall see.

And earlier, I hinted at something important to me. I think I’ve figured out what it is that’s important to me in art, and how it relates to current theories of cognition. I think the experience I value in art comes down to complex and meaningful patterns of neurological activity, and I do know that my work has improved as a result of attempting to simultaneously trigger multiple brain centers in the reader or viewer. There’s something about the trifecta of evoking a memory, an emotion, and a sensory stimulus that seems particularly effective… I would dearly love to see if it is possible for me to do this predictably – and that would mean doing actual research with actual scientists. Again, at this stage of my career, this sounds a bit like hubris.

The Tower © Sean Craven

"Casualty" by Kate MacDowell, 2009

Ok, rapidfire: How long have you been creating art professionally? What type of work do you do? What’s your background?
I’ve been a sculpting full-time for about five years. I work in hand-built porcelain clay, and my work often explores our problematic relationship with the natural environment. I started studying ceramics in evening classes at the local art school and community college shortly after returning from living and traveling overseas in India and Europe. I have a Masters in Teaching English Literature, and in the past have produced websites for high-tech companies, taught high school English, and worked at a meditation retreat center in India.

Your work reveals an intimate familiarity with anatomy. Do you have formal medical or biological training?
No, though I have taken a class in figure sculpting that focused on human anatomy. I study scientific drawings, especially of skeletal systems, and both professional and snapshot photographs of the animals I’m sculpting. Sometimes I’ll watch online youtube videos of animals to see how they move and get a sense of their posture at rest.

What inspires you as an artist?
Conceptually, environmental case studies based on online reading about threatened species and environmental impacts such as climate change. Visually, people’s snapshots of road-kill up on the web, contemporary artwork I come across online, and baroque marble sculpture. I also create pieces spurred on by my own feelings of solastalgia. This word, coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht, describes the palpable sense of dislocation and loss that people feel when they perceive changes to their local environment as harmful—it’s a form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change.

"Serpentine" by Kate MacDowell, 2009

How and why do you incorporate science or the natural world into your art?
I find the complexity of natural forms both inside and out beautiful and interesting, and I think biodiversity loss and climate change is a multifaceted tragedy worth exploring this way. Visuals can communicate so much, yet still be open to multiple and contradictory interpretations. So even though my starting point might be the introduction of the myxomatosis virus to control pest rabbits, or pollution in lakes affecting the sexual organs of alligators, the viewer might create a completely different narrative to explain the images.

In your experience, is realism treated with disdain in the art world? Why do you think this is? Does the surreal nature of your work allow you to transcend this attitude?
Not necessarily. It seems to be that narrative realism is perhaps more looked down upon, though, and is embraced more by the underground art/pop surrealist/new contemporary movement than mainstream contemporary art – but there are plenty of exceptions to this. I think that both the unusual material, surrealism, and dark subject matter of my work makes it different from a lot of mainstream realist animal sculpture and I’m sure that has helped with some galleries, buyers and media coverage.

If you could travel in time to any point in the universe’s history – forward or back – where would you go and what would you see/do?
Well, assuming I could take modern medicine with me and choose my gender for maximum freedom of movement, or even better yet be Emerson’s transparent eyeball, hmm… I think seeing the Pleistocene megafauna in the Americas or Asia would have been incredible, but I would be worried about getting eaten. I also think pre-Colombian North America would have been amazing to experience and document, or even the American West prior to the first railroads. I would have liked to see passenger pigeons cover the sky.

"Entangled" by Kate MacDowell, 2010

Any practical tips for aspiring artists on how to make a living doing art?
First, figure out what your niche is artistically; experiment until you find what you really feel passionate about making before looking for the market that will embrace it. The diversity of the market and the ways you can be visually creative are really pretty infinite right now with the breakdown between categories such as fine art/fashion/industrial design/film and TV. During your growth time create each piece to the best of your ability, both thematically and technically, even if it means slower production of work and fewer pieces to sell or show initially. Trying for quality helped me grow faster than trying for quantity. Try to find a consistent routine for making work (place, time, other people around you), that supports you over time and gets you through the rough spots. Get great photos of your work and have them online.

To what extent do you use social media to promote your work?
I spend a lot more time on social media for fun than for promoting my own work, although I know a lot of artists in the pop surrealism/new contemporary field who are very heavily connected to their buyers and fans through social media and keep up an ongoing dialogue. I do have a website which I edit and keep up to date myself, and I post images of every piece I finish on it in a form that’s easy for bloggers and tumblrs to borrow. I spread info through Twitter, Facebook and e-mail blasts myself, but after that I mostly let social media do its own thing and spread the photos I have out there – once you get picked up by design blogs and they start tweeting it becomes an infinitely perpetuating cycle. It’s been very good for me for the most part and brought me to the attention of international buyers, galleries, and print and online media. The key, as I mentioned earlier, is to have great, eye-catching photos, and of course make work that people are interested in looking at and discussing.

"Quiet as a mouse" by Kate MacDowell, 2011

If you were conducting this interview, what question would you ask and what would your answer be!?
Hmm, I can’t really think of anything pressing, but some people ask what my dream art assignment would be:

If I had funding, a large warehouse or gallery space, and a crew of volunteers and artist collaborators I would create an installation of the by-catch of a deep-sea trawler. Basically I’d like to create a pile of life-sized dead sea-life out of fired porcelain or white clay, the approximate volume of a school bus, with here and there a brightly colored orange roughy visible, the actual intended “catch” which is not discarded.

Sounds incredible and worthwhile. Any donors willing to commission it?!

To view Kate MacDowell’s new work and upcoming shows visit her website. To get updates on works in process, new interviews, and opening night announcements become a fan on Facebook.

Textural Wall Tiles by Heather Knight of Element Clay Studio

How long have you been creating art professionally? What’s your background?
I started my studio in 2007 and became a full time artist in 2008. I earned my BFA in Ceramics in 2006.

Will you describe your work for those of us unfamiliar with it?
My work is what i would call Organic Modern in style. I work solely in porcelain, and focus on texture, using nature as an inspiration and a “less is more” attitude. I hand make bowls, tiles and other decorative and useful items for the home.

Urchin bowl by Heather Knight of Element Clay Studio

What inspires you as an artist?
I use nature, fashion and interior design as spring boards for my creative process. I pick up things on walks, but also find inspiration in unexpected places. It may be an art opening, a magazine spread, an awesome corner of an antique store, an interesting seed pod, or a dream…….. there are magical sparks that happen in a split second where everything makes sense and I see how it will make its way into my work.

Hydrangea Micro Tile by Heather Knight of Element Clay Studio

How do you incorporate science or the natural world into your art? Why do you do so?
Working with clay is a pretty “earthy” profession, I am literally working with dirt to make permanent art, which is kind of fascinating all by itself. But I also just find nature to be this unending source for new ideas. Texture, form and color pop up in unexpected places. People always think my work is solely based on the ocean and are surprised when I pull out dried magnolia pods, rocks, seeds and flowers from my inspiration bowls in the studio.

If you could travel in time to any point in the universe’s history – forward or back – where would you go and what would you see/do?
I’d go to the late 50s, early 60s; I would get a really cheap loft in New York and be an artist!

Do you have any wise words for aspiring artists who are inspired by science and nature?
Don’t copy nature, find ways to use it and make it your own. The best artists have a concrete point of view that is easily recognizable; use nature as a way to define yours.

Many artists open Etsy shops but fail to thrive. You seem as though you have really built a viable business on the platform. To what do you owe your success (aside from beautiful work – that goes without saying!) ?
The secret to my success on Etsy is really “time on task.” I have worked hard on developing my product line, taking great pictures, and providing excellent customer service. I take the extra time and push myself hard to succeed. Etsy has great articles about how to find success in their “Seller Handbook.” Any time my shop is slow, I look through the handbook and find things I can improve upon, or maybe find things that I need to learn. For example, when they changed the search feature to relevancy, I had to change all of my titles and tags!

Heather’s work is available through her Etsy page. More samples of her work can be seen at the Element Clay Studio website.

Microbial Academy of Sciences © Jonathon Keats

“…Resources for colonies of bacteria to research a theory of everything, reconciling cosmic and quantum observations in their own bacterial way.” -Jonathon Keats

Part of the Vast and Undetectable show at the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery is housing a unique school to study the universe.  Jonathon Keats has created the Microbial Academy of Sciences, an installation of cyanobacteria given the opportunity to ponder the mysterious structure of the universe in their own microbial way.

There’s humor here as well as philosophy.  The press release itself is deslightful madness enough, but Keats has gone ahead and opened the Academy.

What could the bacteria possibly solve simply by having access to visuals of the cosmos?  Though there’s a biochemical response in the form pf photosynthesis to the flickering starlight, what accidental conclusions might bacteria infer? This is the brilliance of Keats’ installation: the Microbial Academy of Sciences is asking us to examine our senses, our extended senses used for gathering data, and to see our own place in the universe we study.

Microbial Academy of Sciences © Jonathon Keats

Much of Jonathon’s artwork displays this way of playing and teasing with the rigor and procedures of science.  Looking in his gallery and through online searches, you can find images of Keats’ The First Copernican Art Manifesto, an outline for art based on the average conditions of the universe (“Painting must have the average color of the universe. Let it be beige.”); the self explanatory  Prototype Universe Generator #1; and even porn for God using Large Hadron Collider imagery.

Fantastic, provocative science-art.

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If you’re in the San Francisco area, you can see the group show Vast and Undetectable until April 14th 2012 at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, directions here.

Jonathon Keats gallery at ModernismInc.com
Jonathon Keats on Wikipedia

I’ll be presenting an interview with Chyr here on Symbiartic soon; we met recently over coffee and from such fun, complicated work, Willy is refreshingly unpretentious and creatively versatile.

To inflate your expectations of his remarkable, visionary and kinda crazy-beautiful work, here’s a few images from his installation, Neuroplastic Dreams.

Neuroplastic Dreams © Willy Chyr. Posted with permission.

Neuroplastic Dreams view 2 © Willy Chyr. Posted with permission.

Neuroplastic Dreams view 4 © Willy Chyr. Posted with permission.

You can find Willy Chyr at the links below, and Symbiartic will have more soon!
Portfolio
Website
Blog
@willychyr on Twitter

ScienceOnline2012 was my 4th time attending the rockstar unconference in North Carolina. For ScienceOnline09, I had approached Bora Zivkovic about attending, mentioning that I know I’m not a scientist or journalist.  He leapt at the opportunity to have me, and asked if I could do an art+science session and a workshop on putting images on blogs. I was taken aback – I’d been blogging a couple of years then (coming up on year 5 now!) and had never met Bora in person, or even spoken via Skype. I asked if he was sure: how’d he know I’d be okay speaking in front of a room full of strangers?

“Because I read your blog,” Bora emailed in reply.

ScienceOnline is a different experience than any other.  I wasn’t sure what to make of that level of trust based on my blog.  Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough as an artist to speak at the Center for Inquiry Ontario, moderate a discussion at SciBarCamp and appear in a number of podcast and radio interviews to discuss the fertile growth blossoming between the art and science divide people once thought existed.  At the airport, while waiting for delayed flights, Nature editor Henry Gee asked if blogging had changed my life; it has and continues to do so, and ScienceOnline has been a part of that trajectory each year.

The Past
In addition to various workshops about image preparation for blogs and the use of graphics tablets, here are a few notes:

At scio09 I ended up moderating solo, to a very full room. I fretted at the time about whether it was possible for visual art to give back to science, to lead research; I worried art like my own is parasitic on scientific discovery and doesn’t give back.  Made for a lively discussion, and I’m still thinking about some of the responses to this day.

Also at scio09, researcher-artist Tanya Sova and I discussed ways to improve images using shareware programs; Tanya’s resources are still ones I use today.

Scio10 was a very different experience: after noted image-maker professor Felice Frankel accepted my invitation to co-lead a session with me, we explored metaphors, and how far they can be pushed before they break. Images can often elucidate the confusing in science; from physics to geology to anatomy; but every representation is a metaphor for the real thing that can have limitations.

Scio11, I was joined by graphic designer David Orr of Love in the Time of the Chasmosaurs, and popular anthropologist-blogger-artist John Hawks, and we talked about the varying nature of representations through time, whether science can actually lead to research, as I gathered examples since raising the point two years earlier, and general issues of when do artists charge for use, and how important is accuracy? You can see video of that entire session here.

Each year, I think we’ve raised some thought-provoking discussions that have spilled over into Twitter, blogs, and the hallways outside the sessions. I felt like art having a relationship with science is something most attendees desire to see more of, even if there aren’t too many ways of bringing them together.  If you think funding for science is low, remember that scientific illustration and in-lab artist residencies are contingent on portions of those low funds.

But how to raise the profile of science-art further? If it is a valuable educational tool, a hook for stories, a visual treat on blogs, a thought-provoking image, a new way to think about research, how, after multiple years of having a couple of artists at ScienceOnline, does the relationship take a step forward?

The answer, is community.

Building a community
There have been numerous communities of science-based artists online for a while now. I think what made this year different for ScienceOnline, once again started with Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker and Karyn Traphagen and their vision for large umbrella science communication.

After Pepsigate, while new science blogging networks were cropping up quickly, Bora approached me about the ambitious scienceblogging.org. He wondered if there would be enough science-based artists’ blogs updating frequently enough to warrant an RSS feed, to be carried on scienceblogging.org. I assured him there was: the Science Artists Feed was born, (a full list of blogs here and here). I started doing the Scumble posts on my own blog, The Flying Trilobite and have since moved them here to Symbiartic to showcase interesting links from around (but not exclusively) the Science Artists Feed. An interesting side effect is that so far, while the Science Artists Feed has not penetrated most science blogger’s consciousness, it has made more and more of the artists themselves aware of each other as they check out who else is included in the round-up of links.

This nascent community, combined with the #scienceart hashtag on Twitter, (most often employed ably by the talented and amazing @artologica and @katyannc, among others) has created a space where scientific illustrators, fine artists, editorial illustrators and cartoonists can find each more readily.

Karyn, among others, really wanted to art show to happen. It it could not have without her. She and Anton really bent over backward helping me organize and attend in a year where as a stay-at-home-dad/freelancer-when-he-naps, I wasn’t sure I could attend. My heartfelt thanks to both of you.

And so: ScienceOnline2012 had an inevitable groundswell of artists and illustrators attending, most of them affiliated in some way with or have appeared on Scientific American.  This is no accident. Since being hired as the SciAm Blog Editor, Bora knew that visual communication matters. It’s why we have Symbiartic, Compound Eye, Image of the Week, Creatology and blogs that use images so strongly and effectively like The Artful Amoeba, The Thoughtful Animal, History of Geology and Tetrapod Zoology to name a few.

Artists at ScienceOnline2012. This photo was in no way Photoshopped or taken by Russ Creech. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

L–>R: A Tree Lobster, Glendon Mellow, Michele Banks, Katy Chalmers, Kalliopi Monoyios (kneeling), Perrin Ireland (doing that Wizard-of-Oz-head-thing she can do), Nathaniel Gold, Lynn Fellman and another Tree Lobster.

It was eclectic impromptu group; for the first time at ScienceOnline, there was a small incursion of artists.  Just like the researchers in attendance, the subject matter, career-paths and disciplines each of us engage in varied wildly. Click on the links below the photo above for one visual treat after another.

Splashy, Painty, Impact?

There were a couple of messages I hoped artists would get out to the unconference and I think we did in a non-organized way. I learned so much from each of them, here’s what I observed they brought to the unconference:

• Hiring an artist can be a fruitful relationship. Nathaniel Gold and his partnership with Eric Johnson on The Primate Diaries showed that.
• Making images doesn’t have to be scary – the biggest impact, Perrin Ireland’s sketchnote workshop gave everyone a tangible, useful, non-intimidating way to see how images can be put into the employ of science for fun, retention, and in a semi-systematic way during unscripted discussions. Big impact.
• Artists are out there – Kalliopi Monoyios (*waves from across the blog*) introduced lots of people to the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators and Science-Art.com, two places that can be used as professional resources while I discussed group blogs like ART Evolved and Mad Art Lab and introduced the Science Artists Feed.
• Your Wild Life Lab put money where the communication matters, and sponsored prizes for the Science Art Show.
• There’s a huge variety of accessible work for different disciplines – Katy Chalmers and her space and cephalopods, Michele Banks and her watercolour neurons and cells, Lynn Fellman and genetics, Tree Lobsters and their modern mash-up skepticism, John Hawks bringing the emotive realism; just the people in attendance showed how much variety exists in science-art blogging.
• Images can change your blog writing – Emily Bauerfeind of the New England Aquarium raised eyebrows by suggesting that the Aquarium’s bloggers are encouraged to start with their images, and write the blog post around it.
• Finding dodges around copyright is silly in this day and age: email people and ask for use.

Journalism and book authorship at ScienceOnline have finally been joined by visual art: the relationship continues to blossom and the soil is rich.

Please leave your comments below:
Was there an impact?
Did you speak with someone there, did they change your thinking about art in the employ of science?
Did you just see something cool?
Was the art show on your radar?
How essential do you find images for your own blog posts?

And now, the conference through an artist’s eye:

The first session I attended was Perrin Ireland’s most excellent Science Scribe 2.0. I loved the idea and played around with some sketch notes of my own on my iPad for the rest of the conference. Perrin did hers with colored markers on giant poster boards, but lacking paper (and let’s be honest, confidence) I tackled sessions on my iPad. Interestingly, Perrin mentioned an artist named Austin Kleon who does sketch noting on post-its and then pastes them together into a grand composition after the fact. I thought that model would work well for the iPad, so think of these as sketch noted post-its. What I produced is by no means spectacular art, but from a note-taking point of view, it doesn’t get more useful than this. Perrin called it “intensive listening” and I can’t agree more. I’m tempted to go preach the gospel to high schoolers. I actually remember what I heard at the sessions I sketched in – if only I’d sketch noted in school, maybe I’d have been a better student!

Science Scribing Tabitha Powledge and Carl Zimmer's session, "Making Book on E-Books"

A post-it-style scribe from Tom Levenso and Eric Michael Johnson's session, "The Uses of the Past: History of Science as a tool for Science Journalists/Writers"

The first sketch note I tried. From Perrin Ireland's Science Scribe 2.0 session.

This is a photo I took of the whale skeletons hanging in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. I am obsessed with 360 degree photo apps (this was taken with Photosynth. 360 Panorama is another one.)

NC Museum of Natural Sciences whale skeletons

And finally, this is a sketch I did on my iPad on the Art+Photo Nature Walk at the J.C. Raulston Arboretum. One disappointing discovery: it’s very hard to sketch on the iPad outside b/c of the super reflective screen. I could barely see what I was doing and it was a grey day, even by Chicago standards. With that stacked against me, I’m surprised this even remotely came out!

Anyway, it was a spectacular conference and I’m already looking forward to next year. Thanks to all who made it happen.

I left my heart in the Permian © David Orr

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
Facebook
Flickr
How to name a dinosaur – Scientific American Guest Blog

Here’s a few more of those slick retro designs:

I left my heart in the Ordovician © David Orr

I left my heart in the Cretaceous © David Orr

I left my heart in the Pleistocene © David Orr

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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.