Everybody…
Thank you so much for your inspiring welcome into the world of blogging. Supposedly, when you left a comment, I also received it as an email. Well, I apparently didn’t budget enough space and my server stopped sending them along. I realized immediately that I wouldn’t be able to do this every day, but I wanted to try to write to all of you individually after yesterday’s first post to express my gratitude. I haven’t been able to do that, and if I missed you or I didn’t get an email I could reply to, I’m sorry.
I’m brand new at this. Drawing is so much easier. I’m sure I’ll get to thank everybody eventually and add links to your websites, but please don’t feel ignored; I’m overwhelmed. I’m not sure I realized what I was getting in to, but it IS fun.
When in doubt, post a picture
A few people have asked what the animal approaching me in the header is. It’s the last and largest of a group of pig-like Artiodactyls called Entelodonts. This specific genus is Daeodon (formerly Dinohyus). He really was 6 foot or more to the top of his back and likely had a disposition to match his appearance. Concentrating on that knobbed skull, I sketched Daeodon a dozen times before I colored the drawing in the header. Here are two of those early sketches. Daeodon lived during the early to early-mid Miocene, about 20 million years ago.
Now for some Weasel Words
It’s hard for me to post just a sketch, so here’s a close-up of a little long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata) I did as part of my favorite ever wrap-around book cover. Click here to see the whole illustration before all the wording was added. It was for a reprinting of the Sally Carrighar 1943 nature classic, One Day On Beetle Rock, and was published by a wonderful little outfit in Berkeley, California called Heyday Books. While now it seems an overly anthropomorphic look at the lives of the creatures it portrays, for its time it was ground-breaking. The book tells of the events on an early summer’s day on and around Beetle Rock (a real place with a nice visitors’ center) in Sequoia National Park.
Long-tailed weasels live throughout the United States and southern Canada, but only in the Southwest do they have the white facial markings of our little girl here. I say girl, because the animal in the book was a female with 5 kits. I originally drew her with a rather tattered underside from nursing those 5 kits, but this look is undoubtedly better for sales.
I’m sure I’ve read a majority of all the research papers ever written on the three North American species of weasels, and someday, when I’m more settled in, I’ll bore you to tears with more than you ever wanted to know about the varmints. And as I’ve spent too much of every day in the (whatever passes for) “woods” near where I happen to be living, I’ve been lucky enough to see a number of long-tailed and two short-tailed individuals. The least weasel is still out there waiting for me.
And now for some Color…or Not
I’ve received a couple of complaints about the black background to this blog. In my Olduvai logo, the lava-colored lettering contrasts better against black and it just kind of grew from there. Now I like it, but then when I type and proof all the words, I’m doing it black on white. If reading white on black is a pain in the eyes, brain or monitor for too many of you, I’ll change it.
December 1st, 2005 at 4:10 pm
What a handsome looking blog, with great illustrations. I’m sure I’ll be a regular visitor!
December 1st, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Don’t you dare touch that background. It’s a beautiful and distinctive look, and provides the perfect page for your stunning work.
Thanks for publishing - you’ve gone straight into my top 3.
December 1st, 2005 at 6:20 pm
White on black is indeed a high contrast setting and will help those who have difficulties with vision. I am sensitive to these issues as part of my research is in retinal degenerative diseases. However, for most readers, the white on black causes some degree of adaptation for longer articles. Although, the illustrations do help break up the adaptation issues. Personally, I would prefer a little lower contrast solution like black text with lava highlights on tan?
December 1st, 2005 at 6:25 pm
Excellent, unique blog! And although I am in the bloom of middle age and have excellent vision, the white-on-black, especially with small type, does swim after a few lines. I do find it hard to read. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading more…
December 1st, 2005 at 8:19 pm
The black background makes the images leap out at you. So, if images are your main concern - which I assume it is - I would leave it as is.
Also, from a different perspective, I am slightly dislexic. For those of us that are afflicted with this, the higher the contrast the better. Thus, for me, it is much easier to read than most blogs. So, keep it the same for us members of AOD. (Dyslexics of America…)
December 1st, 2005 at 8:45 pm
I like white-on-black. Even though I’m solidly (no jokes here!) middle-aged, I still prefer to read light colored letters on a dark background. Bright backgrounds tend to hurt my eyes. What I might suggest is a slight tweaking of the font size to just a mite larger, and maybe make it adjustable (I believe mine is specified as “small”) so that the individual reader can tweak the font size with a press of a key. Most browsers support a font-size enlargement for those of us who are, unfortunately, middle-aged (solid or not! :).
I’m not trolling for traffic, but you can see what I did with the latest design of the layout on my weblog. I’m not saying it’s the best, but it seems to work. I think you’ll find that font size is the critical issue.
I’ll be a regular visitor here. I love the images and am looking forward to many good stories about your work and experience.
December 1st, 2005 at 8:48 pm
Oh, by no means should you feel obligated to email me. Your comment here in response to the rest of us will be fine. You’ll get the hang of this “blogging thing” in due time. Give it an opportunity to settle in and find your comfort zone. We’ll be patient.
December 1st, 2005 at 8:51 pm
While collecting specimans for a university on Whidbey Island in the Pudget Sound, I caught Mustela erminea (Short-tailed Weasel) in a box trap baited with grain for voles… The smell must have drawn her in. To this day, it remains one of the most exciting things I’ve ever caught. Months after prepping the speciman, I looked at the skull in our collection. I was amazed to see very small round holes in the skull itself, which I learned are from males biting the females during mating. I would think anything that pierces the skull can’t feel good!
Beautiful illustrations. Keep it up!
December 1st, 2005 at 10:08 pm
The background is great. I personally think it’s easier to read white on black than vice versa. Anyway, your art is fantastic. This blog will definetly be one I check regularaly, up there with PZ’s and Carl Zimmer’s. Could you perhaps give a list of some of the other books you’ve helped illustrate? It sounds like most of the stuff you do is right up my alley for what I (and probably many others) like to read.
Keep up with the great blog and art!
December 1st, 2005 at 10:19 pm
Don’t worry too much about this whole blogging business.
Between the stunning artwork and your writing so far, I predict that you’ve got an instant classic.
(And thank you for the full RSS feeds. They make it super-easy to see what you’ve posted lately.)
December 1st, 2005 at 10:22 pm
I LIKE the background! And the illustrations are fantastic, as well. As is your candor. I quite enjoy your writing style, as self-proffessedly insecure and unsure as it is. You will adapt quite readily to the blog-paradigm, I believe. Keep up the good work, stranger! I’ll be back regularly to check out some sweet drawings of stuff I can’t see wandering around my backyard!!!
December 1st, 2005 at 10:32 pm
WRT black-on-white vs. white-on-black: I agree with DouglasG and ruminator. The black background really makes the pictures leap off the ‘page’. For me, the heightened visual drama more than makes up for any (possible) slight loss of clarity in the text.
Happily, however, you need not agonise over the choice. There is a simple trick whereby readers can, at the click of a link, toggel between b/w and w/b. At least, I presume the trick is simple — a small java script that swaps out stylesheets, perhaps? — but is well beyond my own miserable technical skills. I think the guys at Sadly, No! used to do this before their design update. If you like, I can write to the Sadlies and ask them how they did it.
December 1st, 2005 at 11:16 pm
Carl…try as you can, you can’t please everybody. Your black background adds an elegance that the pages will not have otherwise…please consider keeping it. Your Long-tailed Weasel is beautiful. I have seen many in California especially around Santa Barbara where I worked on my thesis. They are on the CSU, Fresno campus too. It brings back many fond memories of being out in the field (when my feet didn’t hurt as much as they do now!
Steve
December 1st, 2005 at 11:18 pm
Awesome blog!! what with all these incredibly alive illustrations. This is most naturally one of the blogs that make me realize how much dumber I was yesterday :D.
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:00 am
Black on white is restful — not so glarey. Perhaps a bit larger type would solve the legibility problem for us old fogeys.
My monitor barely shows the brown (lava?) text such as the field tags on the comment form.
I looked at converting mine from white to black but that would require re-doing all the customization.
December 2nd, 2005 at 6:03 am
Please keep the wihite on black, it is easier on my old eyes. However I agee with Monado, a larger type would be nice. Your marvelous illustrations do very well against the dark background. Thank for sharing your talent this way.
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:58 pm
white on black is good. do what YOU feel is right, it’s your blog!
December 2nd, 2005 at 10:14 pm
I enjoy you site, no matter if it’s black and white or white and black. Perhaps one day I’ll see my favorite mammal here; Blue Babe the 36,000 year old bison (doesn’t look a day over 25,000) that resides at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Museum.
December 2nd, 2005 at 10:16 pm
Keep the black, O’George, it’s working for me and, as several people pointed out above, it helps frame the art.
I appreciate your initial desire to picture the weasel with a “tattered underside,” but I’m sure the publisher would have hated that. Any allusion to those essential processes is frowned upon in the magical world of marketing.
December 3rd, 2005 at 12:06 am
Change it bro. Too hard to read for an old codger like me… ( 50+)
December 3rd, 2005 at 12:51 am
As a long-time admirer of both natural history and illustrative work, I thought I should at least comment on how beautiful your work is. Very. Please keep including the sketches. I know they’re perhaps not as satisfying to you as the finished pieces are, but the rest of us really like to see them. Well, I do anyways.
December 3rd, 2005 at 2:00 am
I love the Black on White. Like many others suggested, perhaps a larger font would satisfy all including you.
I’ve sent all my favorite people a link to your new blog-home already as well!
December 3rd, 2005 at 2:01 am
Re the white-on-black: I much prefer black-on-light-gray, and find the “zap colors” bookmarklet from
http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html
invaluable; it improves about half the websites I read. Since such things are available, maybe the the original design doesn’t matter so much.
December 3rd, 2005 at 2:21 am
You have a lovely blog here, (I found you through Paul Riddell’s The Esoteric Science Resource Center), and your art is to die for -though I’m sure you’ve heard that plenty of times already. I look forward to seeing and hearing more for you as well as basking in great mammal art.
December 3rd, 2005 at 1:00 pm
I love the Entelodont! It was the first thing I noticed on your blog and I racked my brains for the name. I did a web search and well, one thing led to another and I ended up with a brief re-education of ungulate/Artiodactyl evolution.
Speaking of which, I’d love to see you post some images/commentary about early whales. I’m very interested in cetaceans from an artistic viewpoint because they just look so…impossible. I can stare at the bones all day but it’s such a challenge trying to reconstruct how they looked when alive. Especially that darn migrating blowhole.
December 3rd, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Hi Carl, I ‘discovered’ you over at dKos and am so glad I did! I’ll be visiting regularly as you bring our deep past to life.
December 4th, 2005 at 6:39 am
Olduvai George
Tuesday is my friend Carl Dennis Buell’s 59th birthday. So how come he’s giving us a present? Carl has been illustrating and illuminating the natural world for some decades: I think I first saw his work twenty years ago. He…
December 4th, 2005 at 10:27 pm
Hey, I followed the link from Hank’s blog to yours. It’s very impressive, as are your illustrations. It’s great to see blogs on new topics, especially when they: 1) don’t contribute to the muddle of from-the-hip political punditry, and 2) do discuss creative things about which the blogger has some expertise. Hope you enjoy the blogging experience.
December 5th, 2005 at 3:52 am
Hello Carl
Here’s what your site looks like to me:
ftp://ftp.niwa.co.nz/incoming/m.hadfield/ogeorge.png
This is a screen dump of Firefox 1.5 run full screen with 1280×1024 resolution. My default font is Verdana 16 (assuming 96 dpi).
I find the above unreadable. The quickets way to make it readable is to suppress your style sheet (menu item “View/Page Style/No style”). Then I get
ftp://ftp.niwa.co.nz/incoming/m.hadfield/ogeorge_no_style.png
It’s not pretty, but I can read it.
My thoughts:
* I don’t like white text on dark backgrounds. Others do. I can live with it.
* White text on dark backgrounds works poorly, I think, for small fonts, much more so that the “normal” shading.
* The combination of my preferred font and your 62.5% scaling is far too small for me. OK, others might get different results, but what you’re saying is “make the text 62.5% of the size the user wants”. Why?
* However you choose to set up your page styles, I can override it when looking at them. This is what styles are for. So I’ll cope with whatever you throw at me.
December 6th, 2005 at 3:36 am
I use white-on-black for my own blog… well, actually I use light grey on black to keep the contrast from being quite so harsh, but you know what I mean.
I actually find the dark background to be easier on my eyes.
Runolfr
December 8th, 2005 at 4:26 pm
I find the white text on the black background a refreshing change from the usual white glare that accompanies many pages on the internet.
I agree with Cilla that it is your blog and therefore is entirely up to you. I will however say your pictures whilst perhaps not needing the emphasis, certainly benefit from the stark contrast of the black. The background as it is compliments and adds a distinguished look that many blogs lack.
Keep the entries and pictures coming, both are astounding.
December 11th, 2005 at 8:04 am
Regarding attitude I’d have to say the big difference between entelodonts and pigs is that in 20 million years the suiformes developed a sense of humor. A rotten, nasty, let’s giggle at others’ misfortune sense of humor; but at least they’re more prone to laugh at you than evicerate.
January 4th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Your artwork is stunning. But since you asked, I actually cannot read your blog. The white on black is illegible to me — I have to copy it to something else to read the text.