A #SciArt Selection 🍁🍂🍃
As an artist I find social media to be everything from motivating and productive to frustrating and a necessary evil. But one of the nicest bits is being able to enjoy and share creations from within a solitary work space with others in theirs. These cooling autumn days seem to bring a slew of topics for visual artists to ponder as we wind down from active summers and settle in to drawing & painting in our respective nooks. From Inktober to A Drawing a Day, topics might revolve around a theme or a technique and it's a great way to spark new ideas, share images and be inspired by fellow artists in a similar niche. I could only post sporadically this year but it's always fun to play. Here is a highlight from some the posts & images I produced for two of my favorite fall art challenges; #SciArtSeptember, formulated by excellent sci-artists @LizLagomorph and @FlyingTrilobite and #SciArtober, hosted by the fantastic Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (@GNSIorg). Prompts were sometimes combined with the delightfully fishy #SundayFishSketch, created by @lampichthys, which made it that much more challenging and fun to dive into. I highly recommend having a browse through the above hashtags & handles as well to see more amazing #SciArt!
A Brazilian rainbow boa with its charmingly iridescent sheen for #sciartseptember #coldblooded prompt. This climbing, arboreal constrictor, native to Central and South America, also works well for “strangling” and “understory”. And “heart “ because I ❤️
A leafy seadragon and his lovely, fluttery fins for #SundayFishSketch and #SciArtSeptember combo prompt: #gossamer. Seahorses and seadragons both have horse- like heads & necks and curling tails...But seadragons tend to be larger and more colourful, with their flowy, leafy appendages providing camouflage and protection in their kelp-y habitats. There are about 50 types of of seahorses, found around the world, and only 3 known seadragon species (Common, Leafy and Ruby), all found near Australia. 
A Picasso Triggerfish for #SundayFishSketch and #SciArtSeptember combo #abstract prompt. The vibrantly marked Rhinecanthus is the Hawaiian state fish, also known as as Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, meaning “snout like a pig”.
A shimmery False Albacore for recent #SundayFishSketch and #SciArtSeptember combo metallic theme. Like other tunas, the "little tunny" has a silvery, reflective body, helping it to confuse potential predators. #sciart #fishart
Happy lucky 7th anniversary #SundayFishSketch!! Thank you
Catching up with recent #SundayFishSketch sand dwellers meets #Sciartober transparent. Not an exact fit but this deep sea ‘ghost fish’ could overlap both and is spooky enough for #Halloween! These fascinating cusk eel relatives have been observed at 8,200 ft in the Marianas Trench from #NOAA ship, Okeanos Explorer. #sciart #happyhalloween 👻 🐟 
The eel-ish Hagfish for #SundayFishSketch #Halloween & #Sciartober #slimy theme. This jawless vertebrate has a cartilaginous skull but no skeleton. It can produce abundant slime to protect itself/escape from predators and can sneeze & tie itself in a knot to avoid swallowing a face full itself. #sciart
Happy SciArt and Happy Autumn!