Mmm... Coffee

Ah... that's better. Now I've had a coffee, I can face the day, and contemplate doing things which require higher brain functions, like carving letters in reverse, or the molecular structure of caffeine. This is a first edition linoleum block print, in a rich, dark, coffee-brown on sand-coloured recycled paper from India. The edition is limited to 10 prints on standard 8.5" by 11" paper (21.5 cm by 27.7 cm). The print is my illustration of a coffee mug and how the aroma triggers me to remember how much I depend on coffee. The molecule is caffeine, a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid and psychoactive stimulant, which keeps us coming back for more coffee. The molecule contains carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen atoms, each of which are shown somewhat differently. Now, in fairness, I don't think caffeine is what we smell, but when I smell coffee, I know I'm going to get my caffeine fix.

The Mad Scientists of Etsy theme for July and August 2011 is 'Chemistry' and I made this print in response.

Dolly Spectrum

I made a second print of my Dolly-the-cloned-sheep block. I was initially thinking of a multi-colour Dolly print, somewhat in the vein of a Warholesque print at the Year of the Rabbit show. I was a bit worried about borrowing that aesthetic - the balance between a little nudge-nudge-wink-wink allusion and cliché is not easy. I also wanted to communicate a sense of movement to allude to the cloning: one Dolly-two Dolly-three Dolly more... So, after printing Dolly on a number of coloured somegami origami kozo (or mulberry paper) sheets, I switched gears and formulated the rainbow-spectrum plan (ROYGBV). The successive Dollies, from red to violet, are placed at smaller seperations to give that sense of movement, like fanning a deck of cards.

The image is a stitched scan. We figured out how to do this with my new scanner and Photoshop, with some swearing and some laughing, but ultimate success last night. So now, I can scan the rest of my larger prints! Sometimes it pays to be extremely stubborn. ;)

Bumblebee Best of 2010!

I'm a Craftster Best of 2010 Winner! My bumblebee linocut was awarded one of the 'Best of 2010' awards from craftster in the "Other Image Reproduction Techniques: Completed Projects" category! I don't spend as much time on the site as I once did, but craftster is a great site, and being a member really helped me hone my skills and learn how to create things and send them off into the unknown. I'm very flattered they've awarded me a 'best of' once again! The funny thing is that I created the bee with a view to entering it in a printmaking competition (for prints with a print area no larger than 10 cm, or 4 inches, squared) - but I never submitted it. Perhaps this is my cue to submit more art to competitions. Hmmmm....

Cloud Chamber II

The Mad Scientists of Etsy Challenge for January 2011 is 'Particle Physics' so I listed another of the screenprints I made last spring: Cloud Chamber II.




This is a two colour screenprint I made of clouds and ionization tracks in a cloud chamber.

A Wilson cloud chamber is basically a tank of condensed, supercooled water (or alcohol) vapour. It is used to detect high energy particles - ionizing radiation. The radiation, say from cosmic rays, or radioactivity, or particle accelerators and so forth, leave their distinctive trails in the "clouds". Because of conservation laws (conservation of angular momentum, and conservation of charge, in particular) you get these wonderful spiralling trails. If you look carefully, there's a whole lot of symmetries in the image. In fact, if you look really carefully and measure angles, it's possible to get the mass to charge ratio of the particle in question. It's really a magic piece of 20th century science instrumentation.



I printed the sky in pale blue, using a digitally manipulated photograph of the sky, and the ionization trails in sunny yellow. This is an artist's proof.

Niels Bohr Block Print

This is a block printed portrait of Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962), subject of the Mad Scientists of Etsy's November Challenge. Bohr is an obvious choice - the Nobel laureate not only was one of the central figures of 20th century quantum mechanics, godfather of the Copenhagen interpretation, he was known for his generousity, open-mindedness, and clear ethics (which cannot convincingly be said of all of his contemporaries). He advocated sharing knowledge and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. He was also known for taking long walks and thinking out-loud. I often wondered about what Mrs. Bohr thought, faced with his incessant rambling on the interpretation of quantum mechanics.


One of his most famous contributions to quantum mechanics was the Bohr-Rutherford model of the atom. In the print, Bohr is shown in front of the Bohr model of the Hydrogen atom (all the concentric circles are actually at the appropriate spacing, proportional to the n the orbit number squared*). Physicist knew that the atoms were neutral, and yet positive charge was highly localized, in what we now know as the nucleus, from the Rutherford Gold-Foil Experiment. As is traditional in science, this experiment isn't named after those who performed it (Geiger - yes, as in Geiger counter - and Marsden) but after their supervisor, Lord Ernest Rutherford of Nelson. They shot alpha particles (Helium nuclei: 2 protons and 2 neutrons, but all they knew was that they were small and had charge +2) at a very thin sheet of gold foil. Gold can be pounded into sheets which are scarcely a few atoms thick. Anyway, some of the alpha particles bounced right back, which Rutherford famously described thus,

It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realized that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive center, carrying a charge.[2]

So Rutherford proposed his model of the atom by making analogy to the solar system. He postulated that the positive nucleus is like the sun, with negative electrons orbiting like planets. This model seems to have reasonated with the public (and you still see absurb, outdated images to symbolize atomic physics, with a dot and various elipses around it) - but it's wrong. You see, it suffers from ...wait for it... spiral death! Physicists are a melodramatic bunch. You see, accelerating charges, like electrons going in circles, give off light, hence loose energy, so would be expected to spiral into the nucleus and annihilate.


Bohr proposed that the orbits of electrons were somewhat like planetary orbits (though circular, and at specific quantized distances). To explain how orbitting charged electrons didn't lose energy he stipulated that perhaps they simply weren't allowed anywhere but the specific orbits. They could lower their energy state if excited by falling to a lower orbit, giving off a specific photon of a specific colour related to the specific, quantized, difference between energy levels. This also explained how the spectra of gases had distinct, thin, spectral lines. I've illustrated this with the Balmer series - because it is composed of lines which are visible to the eye (H-alpha is red and caused by a jump from the 3rd to 2nd orbit; H-beta is cyan and caused by a jump from the 4th to 2nd orbit; H-gamma is indigo and caused by a jump from the 5th to 2nd orbit; and H-delta is violet and caused by a jump from the 6th to 2nd orbit). I've shown both the quantum jumps (squigelly arrows - squigelly lines are traditional for photons) and by the line spectrum below Bohr.

This is a first edition print (one of eight) on Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper, (12.5" by 17").

*The fact that I needed to make my concentric circles at appropriately spaced radii (and the line spectra are at the right spacing too, of course) probably reflects on my sanity in some way, but you know, how can I resist the Bohr Hydrogen atom? I mean one can actually solve it analytically from first principles! How cool is that? Even though, in theory, one ought to be able to continue with this logic and derive all of chemistry as a simple application of quantum mechanics, it very rapidly becomes too complicated and we must rely on computers.

Bats

The Mad Scientists of Etsy October challenge (in time for Hallowe'en, of course) is one of my favorite echolocating, mammals, the one-and-only flying bats!

An opalescent, silver-coloured bat linocut is hand-printed on deep teal Japanese unryu paper, in this first edition print. The edition is limited to 9 prints. Each print is 7" tall by 10.3" wide (18 cm x 26 cm).

I love unryu paper and the gorgeous, yet unpredicatble fibre texture. So strong and lovely.




And, just for you, the block:

Hard-headed Vegetarian - Euoplocephalus linocut 1st edition

Euoplocephalus, a tank of a plant-eating, Late Cretaceous Ankylosaur dinosaur, has a name which literally means well-armoured head. He had fused plated protecting back and neck and triangular horns protecting his face, shoulders and tail. His main weapon was a ball of fused bone which acted as a club at the end of his tail. He was 20 feet or 6 m long, had thick legs to carry his heavy weight and likely ambled through woodlands in what is now Alberta and Montana.

This is an original, first edition lino block print on Japanese kozo (mulberry paper) 8 inches tall by 14 inches wide (20.3 cm by 35.6 cm). The edition is limited to 14 hand-burnished prints. The colour is a somewhat variable mixture, reflecting the variability we see in nature.

For the month of April, the MSOE challenge is the Cretaceous, a geological era 135 to 65 million years ago, which saw the break-up of Pangaea, the development of flowering plants, some first hints of early mammal life, the arrival new dinosaurs but ended with the largest mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The end of the Cretaceous was an end of an era like no other.

The Tortoise is Not For Surfing

The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolutely deaf; certainly they do not overhear a person walking closely behind them. I was always amused, when overtaking one of these great monsters as it was quietly pacing along, to see how suddenly, the instant I passed, it would draw in its head and legs, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground with a heavy sound, as if struck dead. I frequently got on their backs, and then, upon giving a few raps on the hinder part of the shell, they would rise up and walk away; but I found it very difficult to keep my balance.

-Charles Darwin, 1835, Galapagos Islands (as quoted in Tortoise by Peter Young)




The Mad Scientists of Etsy (MSOE) challenge for March, 2009, honours the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. I have depicted Darwin as a young man, during his famous voyage on the HMS Beagle and its stay in the Galapagos Islands. The giant tortoises which thrived on the islands, and the variations in species from island to island were instrumental to his thinking, when he later wrote "On the origin of species" which divulged his understanding of biological evolution.

I like the irreverent image of Darwin on the stately, ancient tortoises, but don't try this at home kids! Tortoises are not for surfing.

This is an original lino block print on pale green Japanese washi paper. Each sheet is 12.5 inches tall and 6 " wide. This is one of the first edition of 12.





I have got to say, this one was quite the compositional challenge. The perspective and anatomy were a challenge. There just aren't many images of a young Charles Darwin, nor (luckily for the tortoises of the world) are images of people standing (rather than children sitting) on tortoises common. So, I needed to figure out: Darwin's facial structure (man, did he have a prominent brow, much to the glee of the chariacturists), men's clothing typical of ~1835, the anatomy and relative scale of a Galapagos tortoise, how to combine these in a pleasing and hopefully plausible (if somewhat humourous) way. I had wanted him to really be in a surfing stance, but I couldn't get that to work. I think I got something; it amuses me how, through no effort on my part, he looks inexplicably serious, while doing this silly thing. Also, it appears to me that this tortoise is contemplating how to unbalance him.

Also, things stacked on turtles or tortoises really seems to be an archetype in the collective unconscious. This also interests me, particularly as an earth scientist (who happens to collect turtle-shaped items).