Here’s a crustacean with crab in its name for #InsertAnInvert2024. Is it a crab? No, not a crab! This is a handprinted lino block print of the Yeti crab (Kiwa hirsuta), a crustacean with silky blond setae (resembling fur, which reminded scientists of the Abomnible Snowman) found on the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge. The Yeti crab was found during the 2005 Census of Marine Life, near hydrothermal vents along the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge, 🧵1/n
For International Tea Day, my Green Tea Chemistry print. This linocut illustrates green tea and its chemistry. There's a tea pot, two cups of tea and a tea plant (Camellia sinensis) on a tray, and in the steam, you can see some of the organic chemicals found in green tea. Up to 27% of the composition of green tea can be a member of the flavonoids called catechins like the molecule illustrated on the right. 🧵1/n
#tea#greenTea#chemistry#linocut#sciart#printmaking#InternationalTeaDay
Happy birthday to #paleontologist Mary Anning (1799 –1847)! She was the wrong class, sex & religious denomination to gain the education, opportunity to work & communicate her results or garner any respect as a pioneering paleontologist. Further, during her lifetime most people thought Earth was a mere few thousand years old, based on a very literal interpretation of the Bible & found the idea of extinction did not fit in with the story of creation. 🧵1/ #linocut#sciart#womenInSTEM#printmaking
Happy birthday to #philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) who, amongst other things speculated about a teapot orbiting in space. This lino block print of Russell's Teapot is part of my series of Imaginary Friends of Science of charismatic thought experiments. In this case, the alledged china teapot, in orbit between Earth & Mars is an analogy by the philosopher to make the case that the philosophic burden of proof 🧵
⠀ #linocut#printmaking#SciArt#MastoArt#philosophy#skepticism#Imaginary
Her posthumous books featured her "wild and fearless life," but she was also a trailblazing famous #Victorian#lepidopterist, published in The Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variations, expert on tropical butterflies, discovering, documenting, breeding & gathering specimen in 60 countries, talented scientific illustrator, 🧵 #printmaking#womenInSTEM#histstm
I made a pattern of my linocut porcelain crab for #InsertAnInvert2024! Porcelain crabs, Neopetrolisthes maculatus are decapod crustaceans in the family Porcellanidae, which resemble true crabs but are in fact closer related to squat lobsters. These are 1 of at least 5 groups of decapod crustaceans which have evolved to be more crab-shaped in a process known as carsinisation. Find this on Spoonflower minouette shop
A porcelain crab for #InsertAnInvert2024! Looks like a crab, has crab in its name…is it a crab? Nope. False crab. Porcelain crabs, Neopetrolisthes maculatus are decapod crustaceans in the family Porcellanidae, which resemble true crabs but are in fact closer related to squat lobsters. They have flattened bodies as an adaptation for living in rock crevices. 🧵1/2
Happy birthday to founder of modern nursing, social reformer, statistician, data visualization innovator & writer Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910)!
Nightingale earned the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp" during the Crimean War, from a phrase used by The Times, describing her as a “ministering angel” making her solitary rounds of the hospital at night with “a little lamp in her hand”. 🧵1/n
#linocut#printmaking#sciart#womenInSTEM#datavis#nursing#statistics#mathart#MastoArt
Doing some test printing of a couple blocks from my current #linocut project today. A bit disappointed in how transparent the yellow is, so I may need to try a different ink. Putting yellow over black is a pretty tall order.
My blocks were out of alignment on initial test prints, but it looks like the solution I ginned up has solved that, which is the main thing this test run was for.
Happy birthday to #astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979), trailblazer for women in #astronomy who discovered that hydrogen and helium are the most common elements in the universe.
Born England, she won a scholarship to Newnham College Cambridge in 1919 where she heard a lecture which changed her life. She wrote, “My world had been so shaken that I experienced something very like a nervous breakdown.” 🧵
I’ve taken my frog crab (Ranina ranina) linocut and made a repeat pattern. You can find it in the minouette Spoonflower shop, so you can get frog crab fabric, wallpaper and more. Plus I entered it in today’s challenge: Crustacean Core!
May is crab month for #InsertAnInvert2024 🦀 & the first prompt is “true crab.” Time after time shrimp like crustaceans have evolved crablike forms (through a process called carcinization) & do a good job of pretending to be crabs, but this odd looking fellow is the real deal, a true crab. My red frog crab (Ranina ranina), also known as a spanner crab or Huỳnh Đế crab, is hand-printed on Japanese kozo paper. 🧵1/n #linocut#printmaking#crustacean#crab#frogCrab#MastoArt#wildlifeArt
This is one of a series, each unique, of my hand made cyanotypes on watercolour paper (14" x 11") with an image of a cloud-filled sky overprinted with my linocut print of several kites, and wind-socks each collaged with beautiful Japanese washi papers.
The carp-shaped Koinobori wind socks (also known as satsuki-nobori) are flown in Japan to celebrate Tango no sekku, or Children's Day each May 5.
Happy May Day! This is hand-pulled lino block print of the Jack-in-the-Green (or Jack o' the Green) an English folk tradition for May Day. Wearing a conical or pyramidal wicker or wooden frame covered in foliage so as to conceal the wearer, the Jack-in-the-Green leads a May Day procession, dancing often with musicians and other figures. 🧵1/2
🌸🍀💐🌿🌷🌱
Happy birthday to #neurologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 - 1934), here in front of Purkinje and granule cells from a pigeon, based on one of his own drawings! Cajal &Golgi won the Nobel in 1906, "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system". He was as much of an artist as he was a scientist & his 100s of drawings are still used for teaching purposes.
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#sciart#linocut#printmaking#histstm#PurkinjeCell#neuroscience#MastoArt
Another pattern of invertebrates for #InverteFest2024 but this time from the Cambrian Period (from 538.8 to 485.4 million years ago). This pattern is made from my linocut animal prints with collaged washi papers. The spiky handprinted Wiwaxia, a soft-bodied animal covered in scales & spines lived in the early & middle Cambrian period and fossils are found worldwide, including in Canada’s Burgess Shale.
🧵1/n #linocut#printmaking#pattern#paleontology#sciArt#Cambrian
I've arrived once again at that extremely stressful (for me, anyway) step of transferring layers onto lino accurately before the much more fun step of carving can begin.
I've tried so many different ways of doing this, and carbon paper has been by far the most consistent for me. I just wish it wasn't also the most menial and time consuming...
Today is also International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day and I for one, appreciate the corvids. They are extraordinarily intelligent birds! Here is my murder of crows, part of my #termsOfVenery series of collective nouns for animals series of prints.
The raven is the official bird of the Yukon, in my print with the official flora, fireweed.
Lastly my crow print, inspired by a photo my husband took.
April 25 is #WorldPenguinDay so enjoy some Adélie penguins! ⠀
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This handsome couple, two Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae), common to all the Antarctic coasts, are hand printed in black ink with a hint of orange on white Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper. Each print is 12.5” x 9.25” (31.8 cm x 23.5cm). Adélie penguins are the most widely spread and southernly penguins (along with the Emperor penguins).⠀
⠀ #linocut#AdéliePenguin#printmaking#Antarctica#reliefPrint#printmaker#MastoArt
My lino print with collaged Japanese washi papers on a white mulberry leaf paper with bark inclusions shows blossoming cherry branches & two of our wild, native bees: the bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) and the Blue Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria). I printed it by hand on Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper), 16” x 20” with various collaged Japanese washi papers for the blossoms, bee bodies and wings.🧵