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Find out what Marlin’s latest creations and projects are. These posts also have some neat background and descriptions of his murals, drawings, and other artwork (with the nitty gritty of problem solutions). And, get some interesting personal thoughts, and interets with this blog roll as well.
Safety meeting on the roof…
Check out this VIDEO news brief of my project on KOMO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YueWbr-d_A&feature=youtu.be News is amazing, this is the third completely different version I have seen! Different dialog, different anchors, different helicopter footage for...
Painting is proceeding in all this heat
Its hot up there, but I would DEFINITELY take heat over the constant wind. Not both. I can't use my expensive larder of spraypaint (I had planned on) because the paint just gets shoved right up into the stratosphere to never pigment evermore. That said, the mural...
Giant harvestmen stake out on the Armory
Amazing processes are busily revealing themselves in the search for my ever so complex preliminary arachnids. They have to nestle right onto the building, natural-like...and so its quite complicated. The angle of the armory roof is such, and the view from the space...
Direct from Miocene: the cavity of the Blue Lake Rhino
Here is a little text and an upcoming sketch from my proposal for the Dry Falls visitor center: (the gist is- "...YOU NEED A PROPER PAINTING OF THE RHINO GETTING EMBALMED IN LAVA!") This image is a collage of both the digital mock-up and a stripe of the partial...
I got selected for GAP funding!!
The acronym to know is GAP: Grants for Artist Projects. It is part of Artist Trust, a Washington organization that hooks up artists with grants. An incredible resource that I am so honored to receive. To make a long story short, after months of waiting and...
Vashon Island now has carbon free delivery!
Well, then again Brent might have something made from carbon-fiber on his delivery bike. I did this logo for a friend who started up a business delivering goods to the people and businesses on Vashon island, just outside of Seattle...
Creodonts of the Chuckanuts…as told by a Tapir Toddler
I am finished with my paleo painting! It was quite the diabolical time sink, but I am quite pleased with how it came out. I have painted many discrete subjects over the years, but creating a fully rendered environment in and around a given creature is a full-on leap...
Finally a trip to the amazing fossil beds of the Chuckanut!
These pictures are from the huge landslide that has yielded all the amazing fossils I am illustrating lately. It was in this slow churning slurry that the Diatryma footprints were found on a slab...making history! Also tree ferns, palms, tapir tracks, heron...
creodonts vs tapir baby
updating you now, I have just come up with this comp for the creodont that is about 80% finished. I think I will give them some "flair" in the form of stripes or facial coloration or leopard stripes...any suggestions? This is a preliminary sketch for a painting I am...
my cousin’s graduation announcement
I created this image of my cousin for her graduation card. She has a passion for rowing crew and playing the violin, so I thought it would be a fitting image to merge the two. I didn't have much time to complete it so after drawing a quick pencil preliminary sketch...
herbivorous Diatryma eating palm fruits in the Eocene (56 mya)
This incredible beast of a bird ambled around North America during the Eocene. I was so happy to be commissioned to illustrate this bird in its paleoenvironment, especially since I was given the challenge to display features that hadn't really been illustrated...
Engrafted Word church logo
I did this logo for a friend who is a pastor at a church called "Engrafted Word". They needed a simple black and white logo that would translate well onto decals, embroidery, tiny web icons, and whatever else they planned to use for their church. Here are various...
we all have latent superheroes in us
I was commissioned to take the composition of a photograph of this father and his son to become illustrated analogous versions of Captain America and his sidekick Bucky. The setting was to be the aftermath of a serious battle with copious bodies and smoke- like any...
jumbo painting of Red Rock crab
This piece was a commission to be something nautically inclined, with crabs being foremost among the themes. Given the opportunity, who doesn't love crab and shrimp feeding appendages up close??? Cancer productus is a native of our fair Puget Sound waters, and is...
Dino Day at the Burke Museum of Natural History
I volunteered at the Burke museum on Saturday for their biggest day of the year, (in terms of visitors). There were Paleontologists and the like all over the place, each with their own area or table. I helped out in the art zone. The tables where the kids did...
A ruminant bird? meet the Hoatzin
This incredible bird is unique for several major reasons, least of which is its incredible plumage! I decided to illustrate perhaps the most intriguing aspect of its anatomy...its foregut. This bird is unique for its huge crop, which makes up 25% of its body...
Hippopotanimusmus
I painted this Hippopotamus for the perennially lovely Christine for her birthday. It was only 4 years late, but I made up for that in the size...it is 24x48" and mounted above the kitchen windows. I also took a time lapse of this so I hope to get that up soon....
Pet Portraits are now available!
Sometimes our beloved pets feel we don't quite go far enough in demonstrating our love for them. That's why here at MarlinPeterson.com we have developed a fresh approach to addressing the needs of your pet. Imagine what a painting of your pet's portrait on a wall...
Mural unveiling in Tacoma
The mural is finished! It was a fascinating process, and being part of the neighborhood for a few weeks while passersby stopped to check out the progress was so cool. It was sweet that the city of Tacoma had the wall prepped and painted our chosen blue color for us. ...
The long awaited issue of Natural History is in hand!
Here it finally is! cool to have it in my hand to behold how true to my illustration's colors the printed page is.
Portland Avenue Mural is finished
have you ever peeked into a Mandolin?
I did a logo-type graphic for a client who owns the Cedar Mountain Mandolin Company. He makes awe inspiringly beautiful mandolins, and I got a tour of the shop and whole operation. On the inside of a given mandolin, there is a decal you can peek in to see a few...
Do you really have to beat your burrito?
These strange bike-rack donkeys are part of a logo I did for a client/friend who makes bike panniers in Chile. The name of the company is Bici-Burritos, which mean that these sturdy lil' bags are donkeys for your bike! He wanted the imagery, (and name for that...
Mantispids have the most amazing lifecycle of any creature on earth. Period.
..but I would love to be convinced that there is something even cooler. The larvae of the order Neuroptera have the most incredible repertoire of ambush predation...someday I hope to illustrate the best of them! This illustration was by far for me the most...
Teaching schoolkids in Tacoma to draw and paint animals.
This June I again taught "science art" classes at Collins Elementary school in Tacoma....it was an incredibly rewarding experiencee, with much to learn for me and the kids. I taught 10 different classes over 3 days, and our projects ranged across the board-all of...
how to paint a Rove beetle the size of a grain of rice?
Recently I was commisioned to do a painting of a particular type of beetle called a Staphylinid, (aka Rove Beetle). This beetle's latin name is Zalobius nancyae. Of course I was very excited to do a large "habitus" of this fascinating and ancient lineage, but I had...
the poetic precision of a leaping salticid (aka jumping spider)
I did this image of a salticid, (also known as a jumping spider), in mid flight. What is coolest about it is that it is from a vantage point that you could never really photograph. They are one of the many cool spiders that DO NOT make webs to catch prey, but are...
Evolution of a Logo: pen to pixel
This series of R's is the evolution of a logo I designed for a client called Rev't Resource. It is a company that does the engineering busy work for the pipe and duct systems in buildings. Pipes, blueprints, and 3-dimensional were the themes to employ. The first...
How many people in Africa owe their existence to cassava crossing the Altantic?
Cassava is a profoundly vital plant that can take credit for sustaining millions of people (i.e. poor farmers and their families) every day across the tropics, especially in Africa. Africa produces more than the rest of the world combined for many reasons: it grows...
3 ways that arachnids inject venom into their prey
I made this graphic to showcase the incredible evolution of venom-injecting structures that these major groups of arachnids have independently arrived at. The scorpion thru the telson, or the tip if the "tail"; the wolf spider (you can tell by the eye...
Illustrating a tiny, tiny spider for the Cal Academy
This extremely tiny spider (~1mm across!) is called Silhouettella assumptia and is from an elusive and little known family of spiders called Oonopidae. They are known to lay people as the "goblin" spiders, but to latin linguists in labcoats the Oonopidae means...
my artwork was chosen for the cover of the December CAS proceedings issue!
I am so excited that my habitus illustration of the Neuropteran Ceraeochrysa lineaticornis was chosen for California Academy of Science's December 2009 newsletter. I did the image for Norm Penny while doing an internship with the CAS, where I also rendered a sweet...
Argentine Ants: conquering new niches thru peace and aphid-herding
This image was extremely fun to work on. It was for an article for Natural History magazine about the triumphant success of so called Argentine Ants. I chose the "pioneer" theme of the wagon, bonnet, cowboy hat, aphid-oxen etc. to make it a very easy to grasp visual...
my promotional flyer for the AAS convention
I am super excited to attend (as a guest of Charles Griswold from the from CAS) the American Arachnological Society yearly convention held this summer in Berkeley! Pretty convenient...I whipped up this collage to throw down on the odds and ends table for researchers...
Chefs dueling over cooked vs. raw foods
This was an image I did for Science Notes for an online journal article. check out the article here: http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciNotes/0801/pages/food/food.html I "drink the cool-ade" when it comes to cooked foods, so my embedded visual opinion on it is obvious: you...