Science and art: Two sides of the same coin.
Jewellery, ornamentation, decoration. From wedding rings to circuit boards, humans have found many aesthetic and technological uses for a certain element on the periodic table. Gold is indicated by the periodic symbol Au (leftover from the Latin word aurum, or shining dawn, an obvious reference to its color) and is a remarkable chemical, if only … Continue reading What’s the Deal with Gold?
I'll confess, I had originally written the following true story for a very different purpose, but it seems to fit perfectly into the ethos of my blog, so away we go! I am not great at memorizing taxonomic names. Frankly, I’m unsure who is. But as a biology student, it was a cross I had … Continue reading Story Time! – The Plant Book: Drawing to Learn Taxonomy
I’ve been thinking a lot about illustration lately because part of my resolution for (just before) the New Year is to devote more time to artwork, particularly physical artwork on paper. I’ve already written about how I will never have the required technical skills to be a scientific illustrator, but this has made me think … Continue reading Medical Drawing and Aims of Drawing in General
It’s Christmas! My manic insistence to write every single week outweighs my urge to take time off to be “festive” (the latest politically correct term from the UK), so Merry Christmas (or whatever other festive celebration you participate in). Christmastime always makes me think of light. And light, like much of everything, gets me thinking … Continue reading Technology and Art: Light
At one point in my life I was convinced I could become a scientific illustrator. I guess this isn’t the most shocking revelation to make on a blog about art and science, but it’s surprising to me in retrospect that I thought myself capable of it at all. Here are some of my illustrations: … Continue reading My Obsessive Admiration for Scientific Illustrators (and why I’ll never be one of them)
I have been attempting to absorb as much theater as I can while I’m here in Edinburgh (then I suppose I should write theatre), but there’s one show I saw advertised that I resolutely refused to see. I saw it as in defiance of my moral principles! Upon reflection, that would have been an excellent … Continue reading Can Technology Perform?
Astronomy strikes me as perhaps the most aesthetic science of them all. It is certainly the oldest scientific discipline, with early records of astronomical data going back 5000 years to the Mesopotamians, who first attempted to plot what they saw when they looked at the night sky. The interesting thing is, though the night sky … Continue reading The Aesthetic Fantasy of Space
I discovered an interesting book on Facebook this week: A Bird’s Guide to Complementary Colors by BG Lloyd. It’s being published out of Littleton, Colorado and is currently in pre-ordering. The purpose of the book is to derive color palettes directly from images of birds that can then be used to assist artists and designers … Continue reading Colors from Nature: Who Inspires Whom?
I’m a man of two worlds. I’m at home onstage in a musical, sketching in an art class, or out in the woods collecting wasps. For years I saw this as a problem. I thought I was too much of a scientist for art and too much of an artist for science. What is an … Continue reading Why Blog about Science and Art?
The Artful Scientist 