The paleo halls at the National Museum of Natural History are undergoing a major renovation. The exhibit Life in the Ancient Seas, which opened in 1990 (see Deck 1992), closed on October 28, 2013; the remaining paleo complex, which opened in stages in the 1980s (for example, see Park 1981), closes April 28, 2014. The new paleo halls will reopen in 2019.

John Gurche’s original acrylic paintings currently enhance the paleo halls in three areas – but only for a few more months. His innovative Tower of Time stands majestically in the main entrance of the exhibit; his painting of a Devonian landscape provides the background for a diorama in the Conquest of Land hall; and his delicate and well-designed Evolution of the Horse spans half of the interior circumference of an intimate enclave in the Mammals in the Limelight hall.

The Wrangell Mountains Center (WMC) is a nonprofit organization that fosters understanding, appreciation, and stewardship of wildlands and mountain culture in Alaska through scientific and artistic inquiry in the Wrangell Mountains. The Wrangell Mountains Residency Program aims to support artists of all genres, writers, and inquiring minds in the creation of their work. Our organization and community will provide unrestricted work time and space to focused individuals. We invite applicants with creative and inquisitive minds who will both add to and benefit from the interdisciplinary efforts at our campus in McCarthy, Alaska and the surrounding Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

Located in a small mountain community and within the boundaries of the nation’s largest unit of the national park system (over 13 million acres), our vast and spectacular setting provides a unique natural and cultural environment for the WMC. Positioned near ice-capped mountains, the roaring Kennicott River and McCarthy Creek, and the raw terminus of the Kennicott Glacier, the local landscape is a dynamic laboratory for study in ecology, glaciology, and geology. The town of McCarthy was established during the copper mining period in the early 20th century. Many historic sites and buildings in McCarthy and Kennecott combine to make the area a rich cultural environment, hosting vibrant communities full of character and dynamic narratives. It is an ideal place for contemplation and creative endeavor.

This is an invitation to GNSI members living in states and provinces bordering the Great Lakes to submit entries to Fourth Coast Illuminated, an exhibition of art featuring flora, fauna, and archaeological artifacts of the region.

• Submission Deadline: March 21, 2014
• Acceptance Notifications Sent: April 5 - 7
• Delivery Of Accepted Work: June 23 - 27
• Exhibit Dates: July 1 - August 30, 2014. [Kalamazoo Nature Center will be hosting the Association of Nature Center Administrators annual Summit August 20-23.]
• Exhibit Location: Kalamazoo Nature Center's Glen Vista Gallery, Kalamazoo, MI.
• Eligibility: Open to all current GNSI members living in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario.
• Subjects: Plants, animals, habitats, landscapes, natural & archaeological artifacts of the Great Lakes region.

The exhibit will be on display at the Kalamazoo Nature Center in its Glen Vista Gallery July 1 - August 30, 2014. Kalamazoo Nature Center is one of the most highly regarded nature centers in the country and is considered a leader in the field. Their Glen Vista Gallery is large, well-lit, and free from visual distraction. As a bonus, the KNC will host the Association of Nature Center Administrators' annual Summit during the exhibit, providing an interested and appreciative audience.

As part of a multi-year photography initiative, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation is working to photograph their entire Art collection. These photos are primarily for in-house purposes, but they would like to add small, 100 dpi thumbnails of the artwork to their Catalogue of the Botanical Art Collection at the Hunt Institute database, which is accessible on their Web site. These thumbnails will be of low-resolution, unable to be reproduced and still protected by copyright where applicable. Adding thumbnails of the 29,470 works in the Art collection to the online database not only will provide helpful information for researchers but also will give potential visitors and scholars the opportunity to see amazing examples of botanical art by historical masters and leading contemporary artists. To date, the Hunt has photographed and added thumbnails for several collections that are out of copyright or are otherwise in the public domain.

Because this is a use not covered in the original donation or purchase agreement prior to 2010, the Hunt would like to contact all living artists (or their heirs) who have work in their collection to request permission to include thumbnail images in our database. Any artist who has participated in the International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration series prior to the 13th International in 2010 and whose work is in the collection please contact stating either “Yes, I grant permission for a thumbnail of my artwork to be included on the Website” or “No, I do not wish for my artwork to have a thumbnail on the Web site.” Be sure to include updated contact information so that we can include it in our private records and contact you should there be any request involving your work.

Some of you who attended the 2013 GNSI conference in Bar Harbor, Maine may remember Chuck Carter who gave an interesting presentation on the future of eBooks. Chuck started a new company a year ago and is now working on his first independent project. Using polar bears as the focal point, Chuck and his team are creating an interactive almanac about polar bears and the arctic ecosystem in which they live. But this book is squarely aimed at a mass market. So it has interactivity, games, and a friendly art style.

To get this project off the ground independent of the big publishers, Chuck is doing a Kickstarter campaign to raise what I think is a very tight budget to get the job done. If you are interested in seeing what interactive books are about, or have kids or adults who might be interested in polar bears, you can support this campaign at very modest levels and get a copy of the book for your iPad or Mac. The stretch goal is to move it to Android and PCs if there is enough interest/pledges.

Excerpt from article by Amber Veverka, The Charlotte Observer, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013

The golden-crowned kinglet leans over a sketched-twig perch, his bright eye peering out from the page at his creator, Leigh Anne Carter.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has adorned its cover with works of medical art for 50 years. A JAMA redesign this summer put the table of contents on the front cover and moved the art inside. Apparently, readers appreciated the art but were not sure what was inside.

But for a theme issue on medical education, the editors made room for an image by JAMA senior medical illustrator and GNSI member Cassio Lynm. It pays homage to the poker playing dogs of early 20th-century artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. Cassio's whimsical depiction of a teaching hospital patient's room has elicited a request for posters from the JAMA readers. 

Mauricio Alvarez Abel, our southernmost Chilean GNSI member is the guest blogger today. He is working closely with Chilean scientists to reconstruct recent dinosaur finds in southern Chile. These discoveries shed new light on the recurring connection between South America and the Antarctic. Mauricio also has had one of his images accepted into the "Focus on Nature" and has a strong desire to come to the New York opening, but it is a long way to travel...

Gray-bearded John Gurche has been in the paleo-reconstruction business for a long time. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures are featured in numerous books, magazines, and exhibitions in the National Museum of Natural History, the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, National Geographic magazine, Natural History magazine, and The Guild Handbook of Natural Science Illustration (see Hodges 2003, 1989), just to name a few. He teaches and lectures about his work to public and scholarly audiences, including the GNSI.

John, who I consider to be the best in the business, has just published his first book: Shaping Humanity. Now, all of us can begin to understand the technical, scientific, aesthetic, and spiritual travels that take John from the fossil remains to his completed sculpture. Beautifully designed by James Johnson and lavishly illustrated in full color, Shaping Humanity is sure to become a classic in the field of paleo-reconstruction.

This is a summary of the post originally published in Symbiartic , a Scientific American blog, run by Kalliopi Monoyios and Glendon Mellow. Read the full article here.

How do I get started as a Science Illustrator? Kapi breaks it down into five steps:

One Truth, Many Lies: A New View of Art & Natural History Collections, a new Artist Residency Program at the California Academy of Sciences is seeking applications from West Coast visual artists for 2-3 day residencies in the spring/summer of 2014.

Deadline to apply: December 13, 2013

Creature artist Terryl Whitlatch, well known for her work on Star Wars movies, presented a keynote and workshop at last year's GNSI meeting. She has her own production company now and she is holding a creature drawing contest that some of you might be interested in.

Wings & Water: A Juried Exhibition of 2D and 3D Art is a national exhibition exploring artists' perceptions and imagery that comes to mind with the words wings and water, be the imagery botanicals, birds, insects, fish, animals, water/shore environment…open for interpretation. The exhibition is offered though River Arts Inc., a non-profit organization based in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin dedicated to enriching, inspiring, and educating through the arts. All artists, styles, techniques, and media are welcomed. Please see the details through Café (Callforentry.org). January 1 deadline for March 7-May 6, 2014 show.

Full details and link to entry forms

If you attended the past two conferences and stopped by the Technique Showcase, you were treated to a display of field kits presented by a number of our members. It was obvious that the choice of equipment and supplies is as varied as the artists who use them, and depends on their preferred way of working, locale, subjects, etc. And of course, different circumstances may require different kit compositions. All agree, though, that the best way to choose and use your own field kit is to just get out there and try various items out. Keep sketching! We will feature more field kits in future issues.

Laurel Mundy’s Field Kit

I almost always use the same small set of tools, regardless of whether I am working in the field or sketching at home. My most important of those is my blue lead mechanical pencil (along with extra lead), which I use for making all of my preliminary drawings. It is easily erased and hides well under ink and watercolor, which are the two media I most commonly work in while field sketching. I like to bring two erasers; a gum eraser to lighten outlines I don’t I want showing, and a fine eraser with a plastic holder. I usually sketch over my preliminary with a more final version in a regular graphite pencil before moving to the color or ink stage. I also bring along a black and a white color pencil, both very soft, for adding shadows or highlights (along with a quality pencil sharpener, of course). For finalizing dark outlines I usually use a 01 size Pigma Micron, occasionally using the even smaller 005. I like having a Koh-I-Noor rapidograph pen as well if I plan on using a lot of ink in the drawing, as it flows better and is a darker black.