Instagram

Livingroom
Kitchen
Casa
Bathroom
Snapshots of our home that I've taken with my iPod Touch camera.
You can see more at my Instagram feed.

Member Bio: Craig Dylke

Craig Dylke




Site Administrator



Craig Dylke is a primary teacher currently working in Hong Kong. He is originally from Alberta, Canada and grew up mere hours away from some of the richest dinosaur fossil fields in the world. Though not formally trained in Palaeontology, Craig spent his childhood pretending to be in prehistory, took as many palaeontology options as possible during university, and spent four years at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology working as a science educator.

Craig's palaeontologic reconstructions are created digitally using the 3D software Carrara. In some pieces the creatures are composited into the artist's own photographs, and in others whole environments were created within the computer. Craig can be commissioned to do reconstructions.

Contact him at fossil3d@gmail.com. As Craig is passionate about science eduaction and outreach, he is willing to do volunteer artistic work for non-profit scientific or educational purposes such as scientific papers. Send him your project's proposal if you are interested in gratis artwork.

Craig has a dedicated porfoilo here, and maintains a blog that includes work in progress reports here .





























































Night & Day

Night & Day
Painted Leaf
leaves
Vermillion Flycatcher
Acrylic ink on a dry rubber tree leaf (ficus elastica) & my lovely visitor
Mr. Vermillion Flycatcher.

Graduating to the big leagues

A very long running competition has come to an end. Sadly I lost... Please give me a moment *sniffle*

When we launched ART Evolved both of us co founders, myself and Peter Bond, entered into a friendly contest to see who could get their palaeo-art published in an official capacity first. Today after nearly 4 years Bond takes the victory with this reconstruction of a new species of Thescelosaurus described by our mutual friend Caleb Brown.

I tip my hat to Peter.

Hopefully once his schedule lightens in the holidays he can throw up a post about his road to success.

Offline Life

In the Canyon
Our phone and internet died yesterday and won't be back up until who knows when.
Good thing about not having internet is lots of time to draw :-)
I'm having breakfast at a diner with Manolo and the boys
and the four of us are hooked up to a little device.
It's ok, we'll have plenty of time to talk and interact at home ;-)
Sepia micron pen on paper. 8 x 10 inches.

I Spied

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
I spied all of this beauty yesterday afternoon while spending some time outside
with my furry boy Turbo & my camera (Canon Digital Rebel T2i).

Faux Cyanotypes

Faux Cyanotypes WIP
Making some Christmas presents for the family.
Watercolor and acrylic ink on paper.
Hope to finish these today. They are mini versions of this one.

Food Rules!

1
2
3
4
5
6
When TLC Book Tours contacted me to see if I'd be interested in participating
in the blog tour of Michael Pollan's fascinating new book
"Food Rules: An Eaters Manual"
illustrated by the brilliant Maira Kalman I immediately said yes :-)
I've been a huge fan of Ms. Kalman's work for years now and I thought
it would be nice to share some of my favorite images from her books
& a few of my favorite food rules from the book with you:

Rule No.2: Don't Eat Anything Your Great Grandmother
Wouldn't Recognize As Food.
Rule No.24: When You Eat Real Food
You Don't Need Rules.
Rule No.56: Eat When You Are Hungry,
Not When You Are Bored.
Rule No.76: Place A Bouquet Of Flowers On The Table
And Everything Will Taste Twice As Good.
Rule No.78: Eat With Other People
Whenever You Can

"Food Rules: An Eaters Manual" is not only inspiring to look at
but it's also good for you ♥

The Dual-Terror of Dinosaurs: An Essay


Dinosaurs play in our dreams as children. Sometimes we’re hiding, afraid of their massive overwhelming power we’ve only seen highlighted by the remainder of their bones. Our imaginations fill them in, adding details like ridges, crayon-green skin and purple spots we’re not even sure they had. Other times, we’re riding them, flying on the wings of a pterodactyl or racing across the plains with the anchisaurus.

After all, it was the climate change that allowed our ancestors to thrive that wiped out the dinosaur’s population. In many ways, we were the victors, even if we weren’t actually saddling up a stegosaurus. That feeling, that we survived and they didn’t, gives us an optimistic view of the Earth when we’re kids. If we can survive what those big, strong dinosaurs couldn’t, then surely we can survive anything.

On the other hand, had we co-existed with the dinosaurs, a good number of us probably would have met our demise by being underfoot of a T-Rex.

This feeling of dominance and a lack of power carries us over into our high school years and beyond. As we move on to scarier places in our life with more responsibilities, we categorize the world into what we know we can conquer and what we know can conquer us. But dinosaurs remind us that sometimes it’s both. Sometimes we can out-live something that we couldn’t necessarily face head-on.

Though what attracts many to dinosaurs is their raw power and carnivorousness, I think a larger, less-talked about magnetism comes from the sense that mammals can outlive what they can’t conquer. We apply this lesson time and time again in our lives.

At the same time, we soften our impressions of dinosaurs in an attempt to rationalize this imperfect balance. As one part of our brain picks up on the victory of global climate change, another part of us is worried that if the king of the pre-historic world can fall, so can frail human beings.

We watch as a giant purple and green dinosaur becomes plush and starts singing about how he loves us. Because it wouldn’t make sense otherwise. How can something so strong and so dominating actually be wiped from the face of the earth? How can the bones we see in museums have been formed by a simple climate change?

The question haunts us as much as the answer does. We’re both the scared lab rats hiding in a corner and the ones who have successfully gotten to the cheese.

As college students, we open our minds to the facts, and we try to come up with solutions. We don’t say it out loud, but all education is essentially an exercise in not perishing. We learn science to cure disease. We learn English to be able to preserve thoughts. We learn history to pay it forward in a sense. But when we learn about dinosaurs, we learn about a civilization wiped down to their very bones. There is no “Greatest Poems of the Cretaceous
Period,” and in our hearts, we want our civilization to end differently or to go on forever.

We use the word “dinosaur” in our modern times as a negative thing. Dinosaurs don’t have cellphones and use dial-up internet, if any at all. We belittle what we don’t know, and we simply can’t know that much about dinosaurs. We can study their bones as much as we want, but the truth is that they could have sat up all night talking and singing in their own guttural language for all we know.

Unlike dinosaurs, we want to be remembered for more than just the shape of our skulls. As historians work to piece together what happened to our ancestors, we push forward, trying to make something of ourselves, even if it’s just to a small group of people. After all, the fascination of dinosaurs comes from not becoming them.



Jesse Langley lives in the Midwest, where he divides his time between work, family, and his plethora of Apple products. He writes on behalf of Colorado Technical University.

Shower

Baby Shower
A baby shower invite for a sweet friend :-)
Initial drawing was made with a micron pen & final illustration
with watercolors on paper.

ERICH SOKOL'S PRELIMINARY SKETCHES

I have previously written about my admiration for illustrator / cartoonist Erich Sokol, whose brilliant work appeared in Playboy Magazine.  A collection of his work recently published by Residenzverlag includes some of his preliminary studies.

Napoleon (preliminary study)
Napoleon  (finished version)
Sokol does not wait until the final image to worry about good design and composition.  They are present in the very first small fragments.

Note how strongly Sokol locates this sketch on the page...


 ...or how he starts out early identifying and then emphasizing the rhythm and harmony of the human forms:


Like many other  artists, Sokol's building blocks contain the DNA of a finished artistic statement.





No matter how small or incomplete, details and fragments such as these can encompass the artist's  genetic code and are well worth our attention.

Blog Archive