The most extravagant displays can still go overlooked…

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Photo #691: Fractal-Like FlowerLocation Taken: Thousand Islands, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012

For such a humble wildflower, growing on the edge of a parking lot, this sure is one overly complex plant.

The flowers change color from pale pink to blue, and all the shades in between. The main leaves are soft-edged but the tiny ones near the flowers are spiky as can be. And, for that matter, look suspiciously similar to a bee. There’s so many different flowers, in all the stages of life, and they cluster so tight together.

It’s not a very large plant, just a few inches tall. But the more you stare, the more you see. It’s almost fractal-like…

  

The Stones are Filled with Unknown Creatures!

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Photo #690: Moraine MountainsLocation Taken: Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

Did you hear, did you hear?! Marvelous news! They’ve found another section of the Burgess Shale! And it’s the best one yet!

*All starry-eyed at the thought of all the SCIENCE*

Quick explanation time. The Burgess Shale is an absolutely marvelous rock formation found in an absolutely gorgeous section of the Canadian Rockies. This particular band of shale is just overflowing with fossils, and not just any fossils. These fossils are 505 million years old, from the middle of the Cambrian era, which means they’re some of the oldest fossils ever found.

It’s not that we don’t have rocks from earlier, mind you, it’s that the Cambrian was when life exploded out of its single-cell roots into the many complex forms found today. What makes the Burgess Shale so impressive is that it’s full of impressions of the soft parts of the creatures, which is kind of important because animals hadn’t really figured out stuff like bones at that point. Really good impressions, at that.

Thanks to the marvelous preservation abilities of this shale, we know far more about the early stages of animal life on this planet than we do about many much more recent eras. This includes some of the most fascinating examples of what life has tried out, such as the marvelously named Hallucigenia and the fascinating Anomalocaris. Imagine if the prevalent form of animal life today had come out of creatures like those rather than ones like humble Pikaia.

It might not look like much, but Pikaia had a real backbone! I mean that literally, it had a spine and the central nervous system that goes with it. A primitive one, sure, but this is from a time when primitive was brand new. Some scientists think it may be the common ancestor of all the animals that have spines, which, if you hadn’t noticed, included humans.

Alright, now that we’ve established how fabulous this stone is, on to the recent discovery!

About 25 miles south of the main fossil site of the Burgess Shale lies the Marble Canyon. It’s on the other side of the mountains in this photo, by the way. As you’d expect from mountainous terrain, the area is difficult to get into. However, reports of a few fossils found in the canyon, plus geological research into where another outcropping of the shale might appear, lead the Royal Ontario Museum to send out an expedition into the high mountains of Kootenay National Park.

And oh boy did they hit the jackpot. After 100 years of extensive work on the old quarry, around 200 species of these strange critters were found preserved in the rocks. After just two weeks, the expeditionary force came out with examples of about 50 species, several of which were completely new.

Imagine how happy all the Cambrian scholars must be right now. I’m merely fond of the Cambrian creatures, and I’m grinning in excitement. There’s so much more to be LEARNED out there!

  

Gray Metal, Gray Glass, Gray Stone, and Gray Sky

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Photo #689: Gray CityLocation Taken: Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: April 2008

You know, all that shiny glass and polished metal of a modern city sure can look pretty. Add in some nice building designs to break up the blocky shapes of rectangular buildings, and it all goes together rather nicely.

I do sometimes wonder how cities would look if colors were in fashion… Even the more muted colors, the dusty roses and sage greens, would add a rather different feel to these buildings. We’ve got a solid idea of what a city should look like, but much of it is from arbitrary fashions and costs of materials. If colored metal was as cheap as plain, why, who knows what people would have made by now?

  

I think I thought good outfit design meant lots of decorations…

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Photo #688: Dragon RiderTime Drawn: November 2006

I have a fondness for drawing dragons. I’m really not sure where it came from.

You see, I don’t care that much for dragons. They’re not that compelling of a mystical beast, and there’s many others I like far better that aren’t so solidly overused.

Like griffins. I was very fond of griffins for many years and still rather like them conceptually.

And yet, I have never drawn a single griffin. But there’s dragons all over my sketchbooks.

Some of it’s the scales. I like the process of imagining how the scale pattern would be angled for each part of the many curves that make up the dragon. When I drew this particular piece, I was quite solidly in love with detail and patterns, and it shows.

There’s one really compelling reason for drawing an imaginary creature: you can’t get it wrong. Well, there’s some perspective errors and the like you could do, and if you deviate too far people will think it’s something else. But otherwise, whatever tweaks to the standard design you do, well, someone’s probably already done it. Long thin body, thick round body, bat wings, bird wings, no wings… There’s so many possibilities. You can even swap the scales for fur if you want. Falkor the Luck Dragon from the classic The Neverending Story movie had that particular trait.

When you’re still trying to figure out the basics of art, being able to fudge design and proportions to that level is a god-send. If you get the arms a bit too long on a drawing of a human, it stands out at once, but a dragon with long arms? Not any more unusual than a dragon with no arms. It’s far easier to create something you’re happy with going the fantastical route.

Though it does tend to lead to confusing sketchbooks full of peculiar things.

  

That mountain just keeps getting larger the longer you stare…

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Photo #687: Gros Morne RockLocation Taken: Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland
Time Taken: July 2012

This particular photo has been sitting for a long time, marked as one of the best photos I have taken. I’ve passed it over time after time, because it just wasn’t giving me a topic to discuss.

Well, aside from “would you LOOK at that rock!?!” Because, seriously, that’s quite the rock!