Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio), Daniel D. Brown, 2012, Pencil

This is a drawing of an Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio) of the “rufous morph” variety. The photo on which it is based was taken by a very nice man named Andy M¢ on Flickr who kindly gave me permission to use it in this artwork (here is the original photo).

Thanks to advice from the talented artist Glendon Mellow, I switched to using mechanical pencil for this drawing instead of traditional wood-encased lead pencils. The level of detail I can get is significantly better with the more-or-less constant diameter mechanical drafting pencil, and will be even greater once I buy a smaller diameter (I used 0.5mm for this one, but kept wishing I had a smaller one).

Side note: in high school, my zoology teacher Mr. Bob Ross once took our class out to the woods around Beaver Lake in Arkansas. There he taught us to actually call screech owls (as well as barred owls). I can’t call the screech owl very well any more, but I can still do a good barred owl. Mr. Ross was also one of my primary inspirations to eventually get my Ph.D. in biology.  


Eastern Screech Owl, Daniel D. Brown, 2012, pencil - Framed

 

Dr. Kira Krend and “Oahu Amakihi”

So this is pretty rad… here is recent Ph.D. recipient Dr. Kira L. Krend holding up “Oahu Amakihi,” which  I designed specifically for her.  It was commissioned as a graduation present for Kira by her friend, the illustrious scientist/writer Christie Wilcox (of “Observations of a Nerd” fame).

As mentioned in my original post, the islands in the pond are the Hawaiian islands where Kira studied the Oahu Amakihi honeycreeper (perched on Oahu) and the disease ecology of malaria (mosquito). I couldn’t really figure out a good way to get a Plasmodium into the image…

Oahu Amakihi

Commissioned as a graduation present for a Ph.D. student in Hawaii (notice the islands in the pond) studying the Oahu Amakihi honeycreeper (the bird – note the island it’s perched on) and the disease ecology of malaria (mosquito). Modeled & rendered in Blender 2.57. Post-processing and texture creation in GIMP. Textures based on photos taken by the student. See Dr. Krend with the artwork here.

 

Octopus vs. Velociraptor – T-Shirts!

Do you like Octopuses? How about Dinosaurs?
Then check out this new T-shirt I designed. That’s right – it’s an Octopus eating a Velociraptor in a tree.
(note: this is a compressed jpeg version – the original and t-shirts are much higher quality).

Buy this T-shirt at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store.

Octopus vs. Velociraptor – Detail

You can get it in black or white (or multiple other colors I believe).

Octopus vs. Velociraptor – Black T-shirt

It’s basically a re-rendering of my detailed digital artwork “Octopus arborealus”

Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus