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.

More Sketches

Cant stop watching the Science Network and TED talks... so I use sketching as an excuse. Here's a couple. The first two are from a video on the Science Network called "Robots and the Illusion of free will" apparently some recent findings in neuroscience have created a large debate about whether we have free will at all - namely because in controlled experiments it's been shown that our neurons are firing impulses that drive certain actions (like whether to push the red button or blue button) before we're even aware of having made the decision. Craziness. The other one is a pretty rough take on Noam Chomsky - the video quality wasn't the greatest, and the speech I was watching was really discipline-specific and kind of lackluster, which maybe led to me be less enthused about the drawing process itself.

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.

White Nose Revised

Something always didn't really sit right with me about the original version of this - it was a little too passive, didn't really express the idea of the danger and destruction this disease is causing. So I went back in, redesigned the digital element and here is the result.

Lotus Leaves

Another one on biomimetics, this time about the lotus flower and the ability of its leaves to repel all sorts of materials, specifically allowing water to bead rather than absorb on its surface; and as such picking up dirt and other particles as it rolls along and off the leaf. Understanding this process has led to the creation of self-cleaning glass, paints, fabrics, and other materials.

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.