Hive Mind

Just finished this one - worked up from a painting I did while in India, it's about the growing network of information and communication that is creating a new form of collective intelligence.  Been watching too much Ray Kurzweil lately.

Roots

Just finished this one yesterday, its about our genetic roots as humans, back to the days of apes in the jungle.  Its really part of a series I'm working on, I'll post the results as I finish them.

Connected

Just got back from 3 months studying Ashtanga Yoga in Mysore, India.  Probably the single greatest experience of my life so far.  Here's a tidied up sketch I did while I was over there, just thinking about consciousness and the universe - inside and out. 

Caught in the middle

Been a while since I posted anything so I figured I'd toss something up - this one is actually based on an old drawing I did for school while my brother was in Afghanistan with the Canadian military... Decided to re-do it recently just to try out some of the things I've been working on of late, and because it was a peice that I always really liked, but felt that I hadn't done to the best of my abilities. It's become something completely different now... but anyway, there it is.

van der Walls Gecko

Just finished this one - the toes of Geckos have millions of these tiny spatula-tipped hairs called setae which is what allows them to stick to and climb almost any surface with ease. It's all due to what scientists call "van der Walls" forces which create a kind of electromagnetic pull on an object... it's all to do with how densely packed and teeney tiny the little hair things (setae) on thier feet are.

Elephant Graveyard

It's been a little while since I've updated, so I figured I'd toss something up - finished this one a while ago - it's about some of the dangers facing the Indian Elephant, namely deforestation and of course poachers. My thought here was to make it look like there were peices missing from the picture, and use that to convey the concept.

Moth Eyes

Just finished this guy last night, decided to post the original scan, before I go in and do some digital stuff - it's part of a series I'm doing on Biomimetics. This ones about moths and thier eyes which are covered in a nanostructured film that eliminates reflections, allowing moths to see well in the dark, as well as to not be seen by predators. The structure consists of a hexagonal pattern of tiny bumps, each of them roughly 200nm high (nanometers - really, really small) and spaced 300nm apart. The way it works has something to do with the fact that the bumps are smaller than the wavelength of visible light, which creates this anti-reflective effect... I'm not exactly an expert on the subject, but I'm always inspired by science and technology - and especially interested in this idea of learning from nature. We're finding out with modern science that nature really is the most advanced form of technology out there (it has had 3.8 billion years to develop, after all) and we're finally beginning to be able to understand that on a meaningful level, and make use of the knowledge.

White Nose Syndrome

Apparently in caves across North America, bats are being killed off en mass by a poorly understood sickness called white nose syndrome. It was first detected 2006, and has gone on to kill over a million bats since, with no signs of stopping. The disease leaves the bats with white patches all over, particularly on the nose, has the appearance of mould, and is predicted to cause the "little brown bat" to become extinct within 20 years as well as making the situation of several species that are already endangered much worse, including the "big-eared bat" and the "indiana bat". I wanted to accentuate the idea of extinction by drawing the bat completely solitary, with nothing around it at all... as the bacteria Geomyces destructans slowly destroys it.

Quantum Compass

So apparently new research indicates that a quantum effect known as entaglement is responsible for birds' (and possibly other animals) ability to sense and navigate with earths magnetic feild - the way it works is that differences in the way entagled electrons wobble creates visible patterns on the birds retina that can be used as a compass. I just had to do a drawing about this - how cool!

Connectomes

Oh yeah and here is the finished version of a piece I posted a while ago... mostly had it on the first go, but just wasn't satisfied so I went back in, redesigned the digital element and did a little more painting.

Visual Dialogue

These were all done for my Visual Dialogue class. It was all about attempting to push visual communication as far as we could, in addition to dealing with some "controversial" content, pushing the boundaries of what we would typically be allowed to do. The first and second images from the top were based on the sins of wrath and greed, and the bottom two were "social awareness" images, based on corporate exploitation. I suppose because of the weird concepts that were encouraged in class, my drawings got a little weird there for a bit. It produced some interesting results though.

Old Stuff

This is some stuff from early this year, it's all based on the theme of communication and ideas... the way what we say and think about the world are often different, and how that is almost always different from the way the world actually is. I had some fun with the theme, but the whole word/thought bubble thing got old for me pretty quick. I didn't really take it as far as it can go for sure, but as a device to really drive my illustrations by itself, I got fed up pretty quick. I do intend to explore that device in future work, I just don't want to base a whole series around it.