creepinroundthistown - Tumblr blog

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I’ve finally returned to social media! I turned in my senior honor’s thesis yesterday and I’m feeling good. Only a month and a half until I’m done with college forever (well…maybe not forever). More details about what the future holds to come, but for now it’s time to give my art a little love again.

Anyways, I recently had some prints made of my new work (and more of my old work) and they are listed on my etsy store. I’ll be adding more soon and hopefully making more soon.

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Finally purchased some blank folding cards and envelopes so I can make real cards instead of giving people flat pieces or card-sized paper! ~ #frog #handmade #card #pen #stipple #nature #animalartists #artfido #scientific #illustration

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New name, new beginnings

This will be about my fourth (and hopefully final!) attempt to get a dedicated art blog off the ground. I’ve rebranded (again, after several different attempts) to artmarten and hopefully the name will stick. I’ll post some updates now and then here, but check out artmarten.tumblr.com for more detailed posts. This is the summer before my senior year at Brown and the last summer before the end of my certificate program at RISD as well. I’m beginning to decide what I want to try to do with myself and I really may give this art thing a shot. I’ll be posting the entire bat illustration project as well as some work from class and some personal stuff. Hopefully this will give me a head start to keep a steady stream of posts going. By the end of the summer I’m aiming to have some new things up in my etsy shop too. More details later!

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Revisiting old friends. I'm trying to finish them up tonight because my PI wants to take them to Germany 🇩🇪 #bats #animalartists #scientificillustration #graphite

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A seed pod exploding. Evolution is cool. 

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Christmas presents are late, per usual

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One of the things that has remained constant since high school. This lady beautifully sums up why no one should ask artists for free work

Do you charge money for tattoo designs?

Hey! I get asked this a lot. A lot a lot.

I usually only don’t answer this particular question unless it’s off anon because I simply see it too much and don’t want a bunch of the same question clogging folks’ dashboards, but I’ll go ahead and put this out there just once more so folks are aware.

The answer is yes, I do charge for the work I do.

For anyone who may not know: artists do not work for free. The tattoo designs I draw are the most fun part of my job, I really do love them. And while they’re fun and I take on commissions voluntarily and I’m happy to do them, they’re still work. Quite a bit of work with many, many hours spent on them. If I did these designs for free, I wouldn’t be able to pay my insane student loans or feed cute cats or whatever else it is that normal people do with money. I’d actually have to stop doing the designs altogether in favor of paying work so I could, you know, pay for things that must be paid for to live…

As someone who really does care about and put a ton of care and effort into her job, it is incredibly disheartening to receive email upon email upon message upon message of folks asking for free custom work. I just think it is important for non-artists to understand that asking for free work from an artist is essentially telling them that you do not value their time and effort. You wouldn’t go to your hair stylist and expect them to cut your hair for free. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant and be flabbergasted that the meal costs money. You wouldn’t go to the dentist and expect your pearly whites to be scraped clean for nothing. Etc, etc. So why do SO many people believe artists might want to work for free? I cannot wrap my mind around it.

If you’ve thought this in the past, no hard feelings. But please take a few minutes think about the people behind all the awesome artwork we get to see on these social media sites and recognize that the artists are hardworking folks who deserve to be paid for the hours and effort they put in to give you something that potentially makes your life a little brighter, because that’s important.

Thanks!

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Forget the eagles. Bette Midler really should have sung “I can fly higher than a bar-headed goose.”

In last week’s It’s Okay To Be Smart, we looked at the amazing science of bird migrations. One of the birds I mentioned in that video, the bar-headed goose, takes the highest altitude migration of any bird that we know of, crossing over the Himalayas in order to reach their summer nesting grounds in India. Some climbers have reported geese flying overhead at more than 27,000 feet (8.2 km) above sea level!

Bar-headed geese have a few tricks up their feathery sleeves to accomplish this. They’ve evolved special hemoglobin that snatches oxygen extra-efficiently from the thin air, and grow capillaries that reach far into their hungry muscles. But it’s the respiratory systems of birds in general that are the real secret to flying high without passing out.

As you can see in the awesome animated GIF above from Rosemary Lutz (tabletopwhale), birds’ lungs are more like bagpipes than balloons, using a system of inflatable sacs and valves to move air through in only one direction. This keeps more oxygenated air passing near to their arteries compared to our more inefficient two-way breathing system.

For more on these ceiling-scraping, deep-breathing geese, check out this article from Audubon magazine. 

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Cat And Owl Are Best Friends

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momoro illustration

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You should watch this because it's amazing. And because some footage from my lab makes an appearance!

NEW VIDEO!

Bats: Wonders of the Night

In this week’s It’s Okay To Be Smart you’ll learn all about some BAT-ass flying mammals. 

I live in Austin, TX, a city known for breakfast tacos, cowboy hipsters, live music, and BATS. Lots of bats. Yet, even after living in this city for years, I had no idea just how many bats called Central Texas home. That is, until I shot this video.

Our backdrop for this episode, Bracken Cave near San Antonio, TX, is a very special place. That cave is home the largest congregation of mammals on Earth, 20+ million Mexican free-tailed bats. In some areas of the cave, 200+ are hanging in a single square foot! At sunset, when they journey out to find dinner… well, it’s one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen (and heard). Their emergence lasts hours, flowing overhead like a river of wings, rushing by with the sound of a fluttering waterfall.

The bats that live here can eat as many as 100 tons of insects in a single night! Exactly how they hunt is even cooler, but you’ll have to watch the video to find out more.

You’ll also learn what bats eat, why they might be the most advanced flying hunters in nature, the incredible impact they have on ecosystems, and how we are threatening their future with disease and habitat loss. Oh, and poop. You’ll learn about bat poop.

Special thanks to Bat Conservation International for their help making this video. They own the land around Bracken Cave, in order to protect this natural treasure for the future. Check out their website to learn how you can help protect these amazing animals.

If you like the videos we’re making, please consider subscribing on YouTube, and share this one with your bat-loving friends :)

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“In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So death created time to grow the things that it would kill…” - Rust Cohle

(Tara Phillips)

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Because there’s no such thing as too much chocolate cake @elissawithane (at homeSWEEThome)

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Wow, this post exploded today. Thank you for all the support! More bats to come

The family Furipteridae comprises of only two species, the smokey bat and the thumbless bat, which (as the name implies) are characterized by their reduced, functionless thumbs

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Nomia iridescens a Bee with colourful abdominal stripes 

This cool bee, scientifically named Nomia iridescens, belongs to the Halictidae Family, a cosmopolitan group commonly referred to as halictid bees and sweat bees.

Nomia iridescens is a conspicuously banded bee with amazing neon-green stripes, which occurs in southeast Asia (India, Borneo, Peninsular malaysia, Philippines).

Sweat bees, play a vital role in the pollination ecology of a region. By having  a wide range of adaptational capabilities, these inhabit all kind of ecological niches both in tropical and temperate regions. In number and kind these anthophilic insects (attracted to flowers) surpass all other bees and thus are mainly responsible for conserving the vegetation germplasm by pollinating a bewildering variety of wild and cultivated entomophilic flora.

References: [1] - [2] - [3] - [4]

Photo credit: ©Paul Bertner | Locality: Mt. Isarog National Park, Philippines (2014) | [Top] - [Middle] - [Bottom]