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Laughing Mantis Studio

Art inspired by biology, created by a biologist

  • The Art of Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D.
    • Woodworking
    • Stained Glass
    • Pastel Pencil
    • Graphite Pencil
    • 3D Digital Art
    • 2D Digital Art
    • Paintings
    • Sculptures
    • Pet Portraits
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    • 3D Animation
    • Ocean Invasion Series
    • Science Art
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Tag: jellyfish

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Jun 28

Ocean Invasion #6: Jellyfish Fields

LaughingMantis3D Digital Art, Ocean Invasion3D, art, blender, cnidaria, computer, digital, field, grass, jellyfish, ocean, prairie


The jellies come out beneath a full moon.

This is the sixth in a series of pieces, “Ocean Invasion,” which finds ocean creatures living in absurd land habitats.

Jun 06

Alien Jellyfish, Daniel D. Brown, 3D Digital, 2006

LaughingMantis3D Digital Artart, blender, cg, digital, jellyfish
"Alien Jellyfish"
“Alien Jellyfish”

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You can see my frequently-updated works-in-progress by following @laughingmantisstudio

laughingmantisstudio

Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D. | Senior Research Scientist | Breast Cancer Research
Pittsburgh, PA
No commissions/sales
@LaughingMantisPhoto: wildlife photos
10am-2pm. @pittsoos 10am-2pm. @pittsoos
American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis). Based on a ph American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis). Based on a photo I took 14 years ago, I designed and built this “wood intarsia” piece for an upcoming “Sustainable Art Expo” hosted by the University of Pittsburgh’s Student Office of Sustainability (@pittsoos). Made from mostly reclaimed and scavenged woods: American Holly, Black Cherry, Black Limba, Black Walnut, Claro Walnut, Curly Maple, Ebony, Elm, Koa, Northern Catalpa, Pecan, Tuliptree, Wenge, Yellow Pine, White Mulberry, Unknown tropical hardwood. The holly is dyed yellow and some of the walnut ebonized with homemade iron acetate (steel wool + vinegar) for the feathers. Special thanks to my friend, fellow scientist, and woodworker Paul Jasper (@copper_pig_fine_woodworking) for sending me some beautiful scraps, including that koa backer. … #sustainableart #birdlover #goldfinch #woodart #birdart
My wife @tam_a_ryn painted a new sign (on the back My wife @tam_a_ryn painted a new sign (on the back of the old one. It’s reversible!). I designed and built this little native seed library in the winter to hand out seeds from many of my ~30+ natives. But the thing with native plants is that many if not most of the seeds require some degree of cold, moist stratification to germinate (because they evolved to sit in the snow and avoid sprouting until winter is thoroughly over). So you need to plant them in the fall/winter (or use various methods to trick them). I put out dozens of seed packets in the winter, and thankfully they were all taken with plenty of time for their new owners to begin stratification before spring. If I waited until now to give them out, they wouldn’t germinate until next year. So now that it’s empty, it’s become an actual free book library until my next batch of seeds are ready, at which time I’ll just reverse the sign. … #woodworking #freelittlelibrary #nativeplants #scrollsaw
Jumping on the GenX nostalgia bandwagon because wh Jumping on the GenX nostalgia bandwagon because why the hell not. Seriously, this is almost every single photo I could find of me in the 90s. There simply weren’t cameras around 95% of the time! When they were, unless you printed duplicates, you weren’t sharing the photos. So I’m not really in my albums. It’s crazy that I hosted multiple grunge/punk shows at my dad’s auto body garage, yet I don’t have a single photo from any of them (or the countless shows, hangouts, and parties from high school/college)! But honestly, I couldn’t be more thankful of that. I experienced my teens without the pressure and anxiety of sharing them widely. It was hard enough being a weird-ass awkward teen, trying to find my tribe and figure out who I was. I can barely imagine how different it would have been with cellphones and social media ever-present. I didn’t even get my first cell phone (old school dumb Nokia) until my second year of graduate school!
Propagation tube holder and a couple coasters knoc Propagation tube holder and a couple coasters knocked out for a friend
Two cancer scientists I work with will be leaving Two cancer scientists I work with will be leaving the lab soon to continue their journeys. Both of them have gone out of their way to be good friends and colleagues. Daisong @daisongliu_ always supports my art here, and is just generally an incredibly nice, engaging guy. Yian @yiany2325 and I have worked closely on a couple projects (and will hopefully be published together soon!) and she even brought me back a little droid from Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge when she visited. So I figured the least I could do was make them a little something. Two pencil holders cut from the same piece of black walnut that was cut down in my neighborhood years ago. I wish you both all the success in the world!
Since my feed basically just functions as a portfo Since my feed basically just functions as a portfolio these days, I figured I’d get this squirrel box on here. Multi-tiered inside, with covered entry to deter predators like raccoons. All scrap fence cedar. I mounted it to receive morning sun facing east with the tree blocking prevailing winds. BUT I couldn’t really get it as high as I’ve seen recommended (it’s probably like 15’). So it may not get used as a nest. We’ll see! It will definitely be used as a sunning platform. It was fun to build either way. We’ve had a family of squirrels living in our backyard since 2017, and have seen quite a few generations since then. They typically only live 1-2 years because of predation, but can live much much longer. We had 1 female for several years and we knew each other well. @tam_a_ryn was the first to get her feeding from her hand in the line days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest tenants were born last spring (the most habituated is “Greedo” - shown in the last clip).
I made some super quick ornaments today featuring I made some super quick ornaments today featuring current pups Kylo & Chewie, former passed on pup Bandit, and late cats Miles, Nina, and Dizzy. I miss them all! Also fun fact: “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” by Zeppelin is about Robert Plant walking his dog Strider (unsurprisingly named after the Lord of the Rings character, aka Aragorn). The final shot is how they were made: some cheap laser prints, a piece of tulipwood aka “poplar” (not a poplar), and some ModPodge. Two perpendicular coats makes it look a bit like canvas and gives nice texture. Cut out on scrollsaw. … #petornaments
Another student gets a degree and some wood by me Another student gets a degree and some wood by me to commemorate it! Congrats to my friend Dr. Jie Bin (Jay) Liu @jbliu0302 on getting half of his PhD/MD complete after successfully defending his dissertation today (he still has a little ways to go to earn the MD part). This is the 12th or so of these I’ve made over the years! Featuring Pittsburgh’s yellow bridges, I think I’ve settled on this design for PhD plaques - it’s very similar to the last one I made for Dr. Neil Carleton last year. Scrollsawed from curly maple, black walnut, yellowheart, and some mahogany/sapele-like tropical hardwood I got off an international shipping pallet used to ship @leonardodefrisbio’s cell culture incubator many years ago. I’m a pack rat… 📸 by @insta_.insa
Just posting these panels because I want them on m Just posting these panels because I want them on my profile. They turned out purty I think. I’ve never painted transparent wings before, so that was fun to try. I obviously could have gone a lot further with the painting. But this is an outdoor piece and the paint will probably be destroyed in a season or two anyway. Some of you pro scrollsawyers probably thought “Why TF did he grain-align and cut so many the pieces if he was just gonna paint it?!” (I already know @evergreen.daydreams did) Yeah I asked myself the same thing the whole time 😂 My initial justification was that cutting each piece like I do will end up with a tighter fit than simply segmenting a single board (which is true). Also having more or less random grain directions makes for more dimensional stability in the final panel. Enough to matter? Almost certainly not. But whatever - that’s how I did it. I’d probably do the next one a bit differently. The fit was so tight, you can’t even tell some of them were individual pieces. Like those closed pink buds are like 5 pieces each and could easily have just been 1. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️
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