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This was my first attempt at creating a poster of the tree of life. I wasn't sure how it would go and started on an A4 piece of paper and added more as I went. It actually went really well and formed an A1 sized drawing. There are a number of things that I like about this still, some of the drawing I was really happy with and I like the differences in scale which I will have to explore in the future.
My plan was to copy my first Poster and did start that however I decided to do this new one starting nearer the middle of the page. I hand drew it in pencil going over in pen. I spent about 4 months researching and another 4 months drawing.
I took it to someone for it to be scanned and got a few copies printed out at the same time. I also took it to a screen-printers and got some screen prints done. I then had so many ideas of where to take it next.
I played around with the image for some possible T-Shirt ideas and for a poster for a local bar
My next step was to start colouring in my image. It was a lot more time consuming that I thought it would be. I spent a few months colouring it, I used photoshop, deleting the white areas then colouring underneath the black lines
I took a bit of a break after finishing colouring then I started to research more in depth and make cladograms in preperation for my next one. I might just make a few of certain branches of the tree for example plants, bacteria, insects.
Angiosperms
Evolution of Art
I made this and put it on a T-Shirt for a Christmas present.
Letter from Attenborough
I sent Sir David Attenborough a copy of my poster (his work is my favorite form of research) and I recieved this lovely reply. I have framed the letter and it is one of my most cherished possesions. I also took his comment as a quote 'Remarkable' - Sir David Attenborough
Plants
I thought that I should make a poster that was more focused on plants as they were neglected in my first poster.
I also spent a bit more time looking at the earlier stages of cell evolution
I stopped working on this however returned to it a few years later. I merged it with my other poster to create this beast:
My first poster was used for some educational manuals and videos.. well one manual and one of the videos is a rap video.. it is educational though.
BIOl005B Introduction to Organismal Biology for the University of California, Riverside
Bringing Silicon to Life_ Scientists Persuade Nature to Make Silicon-Carbon Bonds
Researchers in Frances Arnold’s lab at Caltech have persuaded living organisms to make chemical bonds not found in nature. The finding may change how medicines and other chemicals are made in the future.
http://www.caltech.edu/news/bringing-silicon-life-53049
T.V.O.L. (This View of Life) – Baba Brinkman Music Video
Commissioned by TVOL Magazine
Full Tree Cadogram
I finally finished making cladograms and finding images that I plan to work from for my next drawings!!
here's a close up:
Colouring Book
From the cladograms that I put together I made a number of illustrations of sections of the tree... in fact I did over pretty much all of them! I am still to do plants and didn't cover Birds as much as I would like to. I still made over 50 annotating them and have coloured a few:
I started by drawing in pencil:
Xenarthra - Armadillos, Anteaters, Sloths and relatives
Then I went over in pen:
Fungi - yeasts, molds and mushrooms
I have coloured a few:
Caniformia - Dogs, Wolves, foxes, bears, otters, seals .. and the rest..
I then annotated them:
Theropoda -t-rex, dilos, spinosaurus, allosaurus, giganotosaurus etc.
Root of the tree annotated - Protocell, Bacteria, Archaea, Actinobacteria, Nucleus, Animal cells, Giardia Lamblia, Chloroplasts, Excavata, Rhizaria, Chromalveolata Plant cells, Green Algae, Rhodophyta (Red Algae), Phaeophyceae (Brown Algae)
This was the hardest part of the tree for my tiny brain and I still don't understand it all, I'm not sure anyone really does. There are a few hypothesis' in there and some of them might be less likely however I have included for artistic reasons. (The Nucleus having an endosymbiotic relationship with an Archaea and the origin of Archaea)
New Poster
After making all the cladograms and drawing the smaller sections of the tree I had a good understanding of what to include. I actually drew twice as many species as is on this poster but feeling like it would be a lot of work colouring them in I decided to make a small tree... I ended up with this which is still pretty huge!
New Small Poster
I decided to make a smaller version of this tree and I translated them both into a few different languages, here is the Welsh version:
