Not only was this the FIRST art print I ever sold, but it’s also a funny story!
I was in the student taught class Neuro-zoology, which looked into animal brains! Each class session I secretly drew a little animal on the attendance sheet. By the end of the semester there was an entire animal kingdom on the page!
Before the final, the instructors sent this message to the class:
:O 😉 !!!! Hehe!
Well…who would wanna take a final when you could do a drawing?!
Soo, there I went, artistically representing the last sentence of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
As you’ll see, I start with prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. These morph into neurons, which morph into roots and plant life, and then insect life. Slowly emerging from the dark soil is an orca, from the striped grass is a tiger, and from a thick branch is a snake!
The DNA strip ends with a bear of course! And an elephant and spider. Then you see a hand writing the Origin of Species, saying go bears!
The quote is also hand written, as well as Darwin’s famous sketch I think, with the phylogenetic tree of life.
The next semester I had them printed and sold tons of copies. I had no idea people were so interested in my art– even strangers! Sadly, it was really hard for me to see value in my art and myself at this time in my life… but again, I’m happy that I have grown from this experience and still have the art to live on!
That semester I also got to spend the week before finals making an educational children’s book for Insects and Human Society called Let’s Buggy!
