After celebrating Passover with my extended family, my mom mentioned to me that some of the guests were giving me funny looks when I kept talking about newts at dinner. I hadn’t noticed. Since college things like, the parasitic fish that live inside the digestive tract of sea cucumbers, have seemed like normal dinner conversation to me. So when people ask me what’s going on in my life and I start talking about newts… well you get the idea.

Since starting research for the comic book, I’ve adopted some new creatures as extant behavioral models. This means that besides my usual gardening and chores, I’m something of a zoo keeper. Here’s a picture of my current household.

Dramkon – She is my 4 year old bearded dragon. She eats crickets mostly, but we share a salad for lunch. Today it was pea shoots. (Pogona vitticeps)
Script – He is our 5 month old baby ball python. He eats mice. Dead ones, thawed. We keep the frozen mice next to the frozen strawberries in the freezer, I haven’t confused those two. Yet. (Python regius)
Newtron – An adult paddletail newt. He eats worms and likes waggling his tail. He currently lives above my desk. (Pachytriton brevipes)
Proton, Electron, and Quark – Three juvenile firebelly newts. They are our newest arrivals, they also eat worms. They are quite playful and use their tails to swim around their tank. (Cynops orientalis)
Burrow – A centipede. He lives in a tupperware box next to my bed and eats baby crickets and fruit flies. My friend David brought him for me as a birthday present. I think he likes the home I made for him because he’s nearly doubled in size in the three weeks he’s lived with us. (Lithobius forficatus)
Macro the Minnow and Friends – Four minnow’s live in the tank that will become Newtron’s permanent enclosure. They eat rainbow colored fish flakes and dart around rocks. The way they school, it looks like they are playing tag. (Tanichthys albonubes)

Since the creatures eat mostly live food, my grocery list usually includes worms, crickets, and flies. And, it’s a legitimate concern that I try not to get tubifex worms in the controls of my Wacom tablet when I’m feeding Newtron late at night.

Santa Cruz, CA
4/19/12

The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History is hosting a group show of art from the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, California Chapter (GNSI-CA). The featured artists include: Krista Anandakuttan, Nina Antze, Cecelia Azhderian, Lee Boerger, Sondra  Cohelan, Emily Coren (Me!), Cheryl Crowley, David Fierstein, Cissy Freeman, Megan Gneko, Jaye Hays, Erin Hunter, Jessica Huppi, Eliza Jewett, Jenny Keller, Molly Keller, Kathy Kleinsteiber, Glenda Lee Mahoney, Jenny Parks, Logan Parsons, Anne Ranlett, Diane T Sands, Ann Scott-Chambers, Kate Spencer, Karen Talbot, Ioana Urma, Sophie Webb, and Kevin Wiseman.

If you're anywhere in Northern California, come check it out!
http://www.santacruzmuseums.org/exhibits/current/index.htm

After talking on the phone with my brother Evan this morning, it occurred to me that I might need explain a bit more about the artwork that I've been sharing recently.

I'm working on a comic book with Russell Hawley. It will be A Love Story of Tetrapods set in the Late Devonian. Our protagonist, Acanthostega, will largely be based on Gaining Ground by Jennifer Clack, and our antagonist has been cast as our, usually very cute, Tiktaalik (who has been beautifully popularized by friend Kalliopi Monoyios. I've been sharing a fair number of the illustrations that I've been doing as we go through our research. I've spent the last few months reading lots, crawling around in creek beds sketching the transitions at the edges of water, and keeping live newts in house as behavioral models for Acanthostega.

The sketch (https://walkaboutem.com/tiktaaliks-eye), is a character sketch I did as Russell and I are exploring our villain. We spent a few weeks discussing what the soft tissue anatomy in Late Devonian tetrapods might have looked like. As Russel said last month, "Modern amphibians, as well as many other, more advanced tetrapods, have a nictitating membrane, a translucent third eyelid that can protect the eye without obscuring vision (the lineage that culminated in Homo sapiens lost the nictitating membrane – what a pity! I want one…). Ichthyostega is close to the ancestors of modern amphibians, so it would have had the nictitating membrane." This is relevant to our story because we are using Saltwater Crocodiles as behavioral models for Tiktaalik, and I had observed in Darwin, Australia last December, that crocodile eyes looks opaque underwater, which really does look pretty creepy. Perfect really for our story's villain!

Our months of research are coming to an end, and our story is written. It's very exciting because we are starting to develop the storyboards. I'm not sure how much I'll keep sharing here, because I want everyone to been excited when we finally release the finished work. But we'll see…

In the meantime you can read more at:
Acanthostega: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthostega
Tiktaalik: http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/
Kalliopi Monoyios: http://www.kalliopimonoyios.com/
Russell Hawley: http://www.oceansofkansas.com/r_hawley.html
Gaining Ground by Jennifer Clack: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDAQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpalaeo-electronica.org%2F2002_2%2Fbooks%2Fground.pdf&ei=pNp0T9TrIqPm2gWq1L3CDQ&usg=AFQjCNGkG7QZ0-Oio84DyV7runFjyumJmw

Russell and I are almost done writing the script for the Devonian project, just a few more small changes to make. Yay! This is a shot a drew of a close-up of Tiktaalik’s eye, he’ll be our storys villan. Tell me if he looks creepy enough yet…

Santa Cruz, CA  3/27/12