A huge collection of flora and fauna illustrations have just entered the public domain. Hyperalleric writes:

Had he lived in our time, Thoreau would’ve been thrilled to know that the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the world’s largest open-access digital archive dedicated to the natural world, is now offering more than 150,000 high-resolution illustrations for copyright-free download.

These public domain images belong to an archive of more than 55 million pages of literature about earth’s species of flora and fauna. They include animal sketches, historical diagrams, botanical studies, and scientific research collected from hundreds of thousands of journals and libraries across the world. Some of the illustrations date back to the 15th century.

The library sees the sharing of these documents as part of combating the climate crisis:

“To document Earth’s species and understand the complexities of swiftly-changing ecosystems in the midst of a major extinction crisis and widespread climate change, researchers need something that no single library can provide — access to the world’s collective knowledge about biodiversity,” the library says on its website.

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"Xenomorph Extraction Video Tutorial" Here's an updated version of this animation because it's always good to remember how to extract a xenomorph. • • • • • #scifi #darkartist #alienmovie #darkart #jamescameron #ridleyscott #handdrawn #dark #prometheus #traditionalart #xenomorph #darkartwork #blackwork #animation #instagood #alien #blackandwhite #alienart #animated

A post shared by Jf Lemay (@lemay.jf) on Oct 13, 2019 at 11:14am PDT

It takes a very steady hand. See more of Jf Lemay's work on Instagram and purchase his t-shirts and pins here.

(via Laughing Squid)

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Kottke spotted Olivia de Recat's curiously affecting illustrations of how relationships change over time and I can't help but signal boost. Hopefully she'll be taking orders for prints again soon: "In the meantime, you can take a look at some of her other cartoons (mostly for the New Yorker), peruse her shop, or follow her stuff on Insta." Read the rest

French illustrator Linda Bouderbala did a fun exercise where she gathered some of her favorite characters from geek and pop culture and organized them by color. Read the rest

Circle Line Art School explains how to draw this simple but effective anamorphic illusion of cubes falling into a hole in the page.

(via The Kid Should See This)

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Brazilian artist Butcher Billy was commissioned by STATE bags to create #FlintsFantasticFive, a series of images depicting several key voices in addressing the Flint water crisis. Read the rest

Boyd Clopton was a clothing designer and illustrator who created funktastic fashions in the early 1970s for Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright (above), The Jackson 5, Aretha Franklin, The Supremes, and many more soul and rock stars of the era. See more of his incredible illustrations over at Dangerous Minds.

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Claire Voon takes a fascinating look at engraver Joseph Strutt's illustrations of strange medieval party games, many of which involve beating the hell out of other guests. Read the rest

Nerdcore Medical and Tabletop Whale created this handy and informative graphic of all the important concepts in immunology. It's part of a series of one-pagers on topics of interest to medical students and the terminally curious layperson. Read the rest

Mike McCormick is a 2nd year medical student at Glasgow University. His Instagram account has illustrations of organ, microbes, molecules, and other biological structures that he's made out of candy. It reminds me of illustrations from the Time Life Science Series.

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They're the work of Maria Sibylla Merian, a scientist and artist whose meticulous illustrations of wildlife were mostly forgotten until a late 20th century reappraisal.

Hyperallergic's Allison Meier writes on an authority—and master artist—whose recognition was long in coming:

…to Merian “the metamorphosis of the butterfly, which emerges from a lifeless hull and joyfully flies heavenward, is a hope-giving symbol for the resurrection of the soul from the dead physical shell of the Christian’s body.” Yet by the time she published the 1705 Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensum on her research in Suriname, where long-haired caterpillars in the rainforest sometimes swelled her hands up with poison for days and she had to cultivate exotic plants herself to keep caterpillars alive through their life-cycles, there’s no mention of God. Rather, she starts by confidently describing her own life and personal journey, concluding that she has “kept simply to my observations.”

Despite her long career, her influence on contemporary natural knowledge, her vivid descriptions of distant Suriname, and her intrepid spirit, when she died in 1717 the city of Amsterdam’s register of deaths described her simply as a woman “without means.”

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The British Library uploaded over one million scanned images to Flickr, designating them as public domain for all to share and use. Quartz has an article about the project.

I like this image from an 1890 copy of The Aldine “O'er Land and Sea Library. It shows a man being attacked by a "school of hungry dog fish." It is exactly the kind of sensationalistic illustration that was used countless times on the covers of men's "adventure" magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. Take a gander at the examples below.

"Spider attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Monkey attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Weasle attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Scorpion attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Monkey attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Hyena attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Bear attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Giant otter attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Monkey attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Rhino attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Flying squirrel attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Bobcat attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Crab attack! How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?"

"Bat attack! Read the rest

At The Paris Review, Dan Piepenbring looks at the Ouija board-style "Charlie Charlie" teen fad-cum-hoax and finds it lacking in artistic verve. In comparison, he points to the awesome Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros, a book of "Satanic" illustrations from the 18th century (slyly-presented, at that time, as something much older), devised with similar adolescent titillations in mind: "DO NOT TOUCH!" Read the rest

Seen at full size, this hand-drawn cutaway of the Historic Landmark building is a wonderful way to visualize how the building was designed to convert people, information, power and water into newspapers.

This building is an organism for making newspapers [Kottke] Read the rest

Sticker Robot's selling a new pack of great die-cut stickers from Hydro74, featuring five stylized animal heads of daemonic mien, limned and pinstriped and full of empty-eyed menace. Read the rest

These coy hippos come from a 19th century illustration in The Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. They're now part of a new book, published by New York's American Museum of Natural History, that combines some of the best illustrations and artworks from the museum's rare book collection. Looks like a great read! Read the rest

BeastWreck's CTHUL-AID illo is just one of many fabulous monstrous designs for sale on Society 6, available as prints/laptop bags/shirts/etc. Read the rest