The Rise of Skywalker, the big finale to the 9-movie Skywalker saga…I have a lot of thoughts! I’ll have more on repeated viewings, and after the “Art of…” book is published this spring. This is going to be a 3-part, very long review. What I thought was amazing, what I didn’t like so much, and a specific section on the #Reylo community. Please feel free to disagree in the comments - passionately if you like!…

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Continuing with this year’s #Inktober project: A Field Guide to Flying Trilobites. Here’s where to find Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3. You can also follow along on my Instagram and Twitter, @FlyingTrilobite. The popular *Plaice discus*, from A Field Guide to Flying Trilobites. These are often brightly painted by children in class #STEAM projects. “Asaphus dimorphia is a cliff-dwelling ptero-trilobite. It tends to stay hidden in dry grasses and has a chalky residue.”…

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Continuing with this year’s #Inktober project: A Field Guide to Flying Trilobites. Here’s where to find Week 1, Week 2, and Week 4. You can also follow along on my Instagram and Twitter, @FlyingTrilobite. “The common spotted red-elytra variant of *Coccinella trilopunctata* proliferated across Europe after the treaty was signed. By the divine, or a splicing artist no one was ever really sure.” — from A Field Guide to Flying Trilobites ‬ “Discovery of several…

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Continuing with this year’s #Inktober project: A Field Guide to Flying Trilobites. See Week 1 here. You can also follow along on my Instagram and Twitter, @FlyingTrilobite. The “Maple Bumastus” is a jellybean-shaped tree-dwelling trilobite that chews through the stems of autumn leaves and rides them to the ground. A low, droning “wheeee” sound may be heard. During the final hours of the Fossil Wars, the Bruce Peninsula Battalion survivors all reported the same apparition.20…

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For Inktober this year, I’m trying to make 30 different sketches describing flying trilobites. I’ll add to each weekly post as they progress. Here’s week one. Welcome to A Field Guide to Flying Trilobites. We hope you learn something from our team of unruly-haired naturalists wearing smart coats stained with ink, as they share what they’ve gathered in the field. Day 2 - This flying fruit bat-hunting trilobite (Paralejurus artibeus) has large compound eyes for…

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A theme this year’s Inktober. Quick and fun sketches for something I’ve been kicking around for years.

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Illustrating a fossil skeleton correctly and clearly is an enticing paleoart puzzle. It takes deep knowledge of morphology, anatomy, and taxonomy. Sketching the fossils as they are is inviting yourself into their mystery and grandeur. The agelessness and distortions of deep time, understandable only as math and not experience. I love sketching fossils as they appear, distortions and all. A little part of the mystery. Sketch of the smaller Stenopterygius quadriscissus. Recently, illustrators Liz Butler and Pat…

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I turned 45 recently, and it was the right time to finally get a tattoo I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Here it is, and a few thoughts about what it means to me. My new tattoo. Not fully healed yet in this pic, but pretty close. Dilophosaurus Cyclist Fossil. Where it startedPaleontology-author, science communicator and friend Riley Black asked me to design a series of tattoos a few years ago, based on…

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Appointment is booked, deposit down, and prep for my next tattoo is underway.  Basic idea: dilophosaurus fossil with bicycle parts. Black line. Similar to my other dinosaur and ancient reptile tattoo designs.  Skull study. I need to lengthen the weird notched part of the nose tip and jaw.  Death pose.   Simple bicycle forms to consider. Playing with alternate designs. More on this as it goes. Appointment booked for my 45th birthday. 

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Went for an autumn bike ride. Don Valley, Taylor Creek, Beaches, Tommy Thompson Park, Lakeshore.  

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