Scientific Illustration - Tumblr Posts
New science print but this time I zoomed into cellular anatomy. Imagine this little guy wiggling his way throughout your entire body. Whether you love science or you know a little scientist to be, this poster is a cute and informative way to learn about the the smallest unit of life: The cell!
Available now on my etsy!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/169057528/inside-the-animal-cell-anatomy-poster
Red-cockaded woodpecker, Secretary bird and Bearded vulture!
BAM.
*Floof*
Edit: The first raptor is borrowed plumage from the greater roadrunner, not the woodpecker. (I was close?)
floofs: the photoset
bonus points if you can tell me what birds i stole their plumage from
Last print in my cell anatomy series. Whether you love science or you know a little scientist to be, this poster is a cute and informative way to learn about the the smallest unit of life: The cell! A great tool to get kids excited, ask questions and learn about cellular anatomy.
Print available here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/170317072/inside-the-bacteria-cell-anatomy-poster
David Goodsell of the Scripps Research Institute does amazing illustrations portraying various organisms and biological molecules. Top: Overall structure of an Mycoplasma mycoides, a bacteria that causes lung disease in ruminants. Bottom Right: Cross section of Escherichia coli, a common bacteria that sometimes causes food poisoning, showing a flagellum, ribosomes/tRNA, miscellaneous enzymes and the nucleoid. Bottom Left: HIV in blood serum being attacked by antibodies.
source: http://mgl.scripps.edu/people/goodsell/illustration/index.html
Allosaurus feeding her chicks, by James Gurney
The young are covered with a white coat of downy feathers.
Anatomical Make Up
Sope the troodon wishes u many fried chicken and good tummy rub
What are some common mistakes paleoartists tend to make in modern reconstructions? I wanna know what to avoid when drawing dinos.
Not to intimidate you out of paleoartor anything, but there are so many. It’snot necessarily the artists’ fault; new discoveries about dinosaurs are madeevery day, and many pieces of paleoart are quickly rendered obsolete by theinexorable march of science. However, somecommon mistakes are totally the artists’ fault, and that’s the kind I’m goingto cover here.
Here are the three big ones that always bother me the most.
“Shrink wrapping”: The practice of reconstructing dinosaur as little more than skeletons wrapped in skin, creating terrifying dino-mummies that - while quite nicely showing off the artist’s grasp of skeletal anatomy - do not accurately depict what the animals would have looked like in life. (Compare that shrink-wrapped Apatosaurus to this shrink-wrapped depiction of a cow, if you’re not convinced of how silly this is.)
Problematic depictions of feathers. Whenever a dinosaur is discovered with feathers, paleoartists will oftentimes reconstruct it with those feathers and those feathers alone, not bothering to speculate as to what the animal might really have looked like fully-feathered, while creating pitiful-looking animals that look like partially plucked chickens. Still other times, artist fully feather the animal, but keep the face scaly and bare, just so we can all remember that dinosaurs were reptiles (and not birds, you guys).
“Monsterizing.” The reconstruction of Velociraptor linked above is pretty infamous. In reality, feathered dinosaurs were probably not scuzzy movie monsters; they probably looked like this, and were potentially even more birdlike than this reconstruction. Another example of this is Microraptor, the infamous “four-winged dinosaur”, commonly depicted zooming past the viewer with all four limbs spread like some kind of prehistoric dragon monster, when in reality it was probably just a bird.
What do all these mistakes have in common? They depict the artist’s preconceptions of dinosaurs, rather than creative speculations on how these animals actually would have lived. A lot of dinosaur enthusiasts are in it for the wrong reasons; they see dinosaurs as rampaging creatures of myth, rather than what they were - animals. They depict dinosaurs as roaring behemoths and scuzzy-feathered killing machines, rather than biologically sound, real, once-living creatures that were as beautiful and graceful as any modern animal.
How can you avoid this? Do your research, and use your imagination. Keep up-to-date on the latest theories about dinosaur musculature and soft tissue, and develop your own well-informed opinions to inform your paleoart. At the same time, compare dinosaurs to animal living today. Not just reptiles and birds; compare them to large mammals that fill formerly dinosaurian ecological niches. What features do modern animals have that dinosaurs might have as well, but that we rarely see represented in art, due to lack of direct fossil evidence? What adaptations might dinosaurs have evolved, to excel in the same way as modern animals?
Here’s some good modern paleoartists to get you some potential inspiration:
John Conway
C.M. Kosemen
Julius T. Csotonyi
Luis V. Rey
We’re all used to the common depiction of sabertoothed cats like the famous Smilodon. A fairly standard-looking feline face with protruding teeth, something like this:
It’s a look so ingrained in paleoart and pop culture that it’s even become visual shorthand for making cartoon creature designs look “prehistoric”.
Except… it might be completely wrong.
We’ve all been assuming that these saberteeth were basically tusks, like those we see in modern animals such as walruses and elephants. But it turns out that tusks have a very different chemical structure to normal teeth so they can withstand constant exposure to the environment – and Smilodon’s fangs don’t show any of those adaptations.
There’s a detailed explanation of this idea and the science behind it over at this blog post. It isn’t an academically published theory yet (although I’d love to see somebody do a proper study), but it’s still very plausible and interesting to think about.
The tl;dr version: it’s actually more likely that Smilodon covered its teeth with big jowly lips to protect them. Which means it probably looked like a feline version of a St. Bernard. Or… sort of like Chester Cheetah.
"Elephantidae"
2020
Phylogenetic tree of the three extant elephant species
African Bush Elephant (Loxodonta africana)
African Forest Elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis)
Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus)
In popular knowledge, elephants are commonly separated into two kinds, African and Asian (that is, when a distinction is made at all). In actuality, there are three very distinct, very different, very unique species of elephant alive today:
-The African Bush Elephant (Loxodonta africana)
-The African Forest Elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis)
-The Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus)
The two species of African Elephants are as distinct from each other as Asian Elephants are from Woolly Mammoths. The African Forest Elephant is actually more closely related to the extinct, massive Straight-tusked Elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) than it is to its contemporary African cousin.
All three elephant species are endangered.
"Naja nivea"
2020
Cape Cobra (Naja nivea)
My favorite of the true cobra species. Highly venomous and adaptable, and also coming in a variety of different colorations, my favorite of which is the smooth, bright yellow.
"Once Upon A Time In India"
2020
Asiatic Lion (Panthera leo persica) and Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris)
The meeting of our world's two supercats, the Tiger and the Lion, likely has not occurred in the wild for a couple of centuries, but it has stirred our collective imagination since antiquity, and continues to do so today. Though the historic range of Asiatic Lions did overlap with that of Caspian Tigers in parts Central Asia and the Middle East, and with Bengal Tigers in parts of India, I actually believe encounters and competition would have remained fairly limited by habitat preferences. The Tiger is essentially a forest predator, and the Lion prefers open, drier terrain. When they did meet, they would have done so in transitional zones, where grasslands and bushlands merged into dry forests.
A fight could go either way depending on each individual animal's size, fitness and temperament. But most historical and contemporary records, opinions of big cat experts, and my personal views, favor the larger, more powerful Tiger. In any case, I've always thought a bit silly to waste so much energy arguing over which animal would beat the other in a fight, as if they were dueling monsters in a movie or wrestling champions in an arena, and conservationists and experts tend to share in that view. There's a whole lot more that makes these animals amazing than just their fighting capabilities, and their coexisting in the wild is interesting beyond the question of who would win in a fight.
Though still threatened on many fronts, Bengal Tigers and Asiatic Lions have grown in numbers and are beginning to outgrow their sanctuaries in India, with one Tiger recently wandering into the state of Gujarat, the only place in the world where Asiatic Lions reside. Only the future will tell if this scene will one day happen again, or if it will remain a picture of the past.
"Ancient"
2019
Galápagos Tortoise (Chelonoidis niger)
The margay (Leopardus wiedii), or tree ocelot, is a relative of the ocelot native to forests of Central and South America. Also, they have spots. So many spots.
Oh, extinct birds, how I love you and miss you.
In order:
White swamphen (Porphyrio albus), native to Lord Howe Island
Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris), native to Aotearoa New Zealand
Dodo (Raphus cucullatus), native to Mauritius
Laughing owl (Ninox albifacies), native to Aotearoa New Zealand
Mysterious starling (Aplonis mavornata), native to Mauke
North Island giant moa (Dinornis novaezealandiae), native to Aotearoa New Zealand
O'ahu 'ō'ō (Moho apicalis), native to O'ahu
[Image IDs in alt text.]
Happy new year! I painted a bufflehead.
Happy Thursday! Have a lagomorph.
Never drawn a chameleon before! These dudes are such fun shapes.