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| Photography and photo collage | Logos and Web Graphics | |||
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| Mythical and fantastic beasts | ||||
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| Mythical animals and animals from our reality | ||||
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| Photography and photo collage | Logos and Web Graphics | |||
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I have a long, low key, career as an artist and writer which has included publication of my work in various science fiction venues, dog magazines, web sites, co-author on a real "scientific" article, a number of natural history and paleontology publications, Smithsonian Magazine and the cover of Science magazine. I have also done exhibit work for a number of natural history museums and I taught medical and veterinary anatomy for almost 20 years *
Before I became active in competitive dog sports (an all consuming addiction that derailed a number of other projects ***) I attended a lot of science fiction conventions. This led to my creating an art print and stationary company called "Sleepy Lion Graphics". My involvement with Sleepy Lion continued during the 1970's and 1980's when I lived in Washington DC (during my Smithsonian Fellowship) and while I was in New England (while I worked at the MIT Logo Lab). Sleepy Lion Graphics lasted through my teaching anatomy at a medical school phase (Howard University)*.
After a brief partnership with a New Jersey fan, Rick Gellman, Sleepy Lion Graphics consisted of me and a rational partner, Scott Dennis (who now has Fo' Paws Productions) who took care of interacting with the public, packaging and selling while I took care of creating the art work and managing production of the product. It was a good partnership because dealing with the selling end of things was generally lethal to my ability to create while Scott was not an artist but a very personable individual who enjoyed people and was an excellent business person.
I more or less abandoned science fiction fandom because commuting to Philadelphia from Baltimore, engaging in competitive activities with my Borzoi hounds ***, and doing my research was totally consuming [and exhausting, especially after breathing formaldehyde through the fall semester]. In the mean time, Scott moved off to Ohio and Sleepy Lion Graphics went to sleep as it were.
Recently I have discovered some on line production and shipping companies such as CafePress.com and Zazzle.com. These seem to offer me the opprotunity to sell my artwork again without having to face the lethal problem of marketing (packaging and shipping). So I am going to experiment with creation of items through these online companies. I have a large inventory of graphic designs left over from the Sleepy Lion days as well as a collection of photographic images from our Borzoi hobby and my current work creating a website for Sans Souci Iris Nursery in Monkton, Maryland. I also think I am going to start going to science fiction conventions again.
In addition, starting with the influence of my house mate in Berkeley, Alicia [a lingusitics major], and amplified by my time working at the MIT Logo Lab, I have developed a serious computer habit. In 1990 or so a guy we referred to as "Crazy Steve" who owned a small computer store [now closed] in Ann Arundel County, Maryland, taught me how to build desktop computers from components. This has been both liberating and time consuming. Most of my computer work is done on an Athlon 2.3 Ghz computer that I built in 2004. It is currently set up for multiple booting into:
I think it is now time to renew my involvement in art, photography and graphics.
These designs are among those available in various formats at my CafePress store .
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Playmates - Saluki and Dragon an example of a stipple drawing. |
Many of the illustrations in my online gallery were done in when I was in graduate school in the 1970's and displayed at Science Fiction Conventions. Most of the originals were sold at these conventions. The originals were generally black and white renderings. In those days most interior illustrations were done in black and white in technical articles, science fiction and fantasy pro magazines and fanzines. The only reasonably priced high quality mass reproduction technique was the metal plate photo offset press. I became quite adept at pen and ink stipple drawings using an india ink, technical pen called a rapidograph. These were also used in the Paleontology museum (where I worked as a student curatorial assistant) an in the keeping of field note books for the various field courses I took in paleontology and zoology. India ink is a permanent, waterproof and fade resistant ink.
Stipple drawing is a method for rendering shading and three dimensionality to a drawing without requiring the use of a half tone plate. It gives a crisper illustration than a continuous tone rendering that is put through the half tone screening process. As I have been preparing these illustrations for this on line gallery I have discovered that stippled images are not particularly good for computered based color addition. The drawings that I had which were relatively simple black and white images have taken color from the computer quite well but the stippled drawings still look better in their original black and white or sepia and white presentation.
Although we have a very nice Mac(tm) with Photoshop(tm), for the preparation of the online versions of most of these images I have used the classic Amiga program ImageFX running under Amithlon on a Athlon 2.3 Ghz computer that I built in 2004.
* Yes, at a real accredited medical school (Howard University) and a real accredited college of veterinary medicine (University of Pennsylvania) until someone in the administration at the latter figured out that my life time ambition was to stay in graduate school and terminated my long term project. Basically I like to teach and I hate writing grant proposals. The grim truth is that, had I finished my degree and landed a job as a PhD in Anatomy, Paleontology or a related field, then I would have also graduated into the position of having to write grants to keep my job, not teach or do exhibit design**.
** This would even be the case if I got a job with a Natural History Museum, how do you think they are able to stay open?
*** However there is nothing that can make an evolutionary biologist happier
than giving them a gene pool to play with (or as my husband, Dr Saklad,
suggests, swim in. Darwin came back from his voyage on the Beagle and started
raising fancy pigeons. It took him years to get around to actually writing "The
Origin of the Species and the Descent of Man". On reflection, I realise I have been interested in
inheritance, genetics and evolution
since I was in junior high school. At varies times I have raised rabbits, hamsters (at one point I had 120 of them for a science fair project)
tropical fish (owning successfully, breeding - not very successfully) and a variety of dogs (Borzoi, German shepherds, NGA Greyhounds and some cross breds). I have also owned cats, moles, snakes, lace monitor lizards,
tokay geckos (they bark), salamanders, banana slugs and horses.
