Beetles, Snakes and Red Bubbles

Hi All,

Good (very early) morning.
Having spent a lot of time fiddling around with The Greatest Minds' shop on Red Bubble, I just wanted to share with you three of the most recent images uploaded to our shop there.

First up is this picture - a redraft of a vintage aqua/blue snake picture that is now listed under the title "Blue Serpentine"-




It seems to me that beetles, bugs and snakes have been staples of human art pretty much since the dawn of time. If you think about it, snakes feature in Chinese horoscopes and in ancient Egyptian folklore and history. Similarly, scarab beetles and the like are found amongst the hieroglyphics inside the pyramids. Wherever they turn up, they are instantly recognizable and distinctive.

Having studied beetles at length and having written for several years on insects and reptiles/herps of many kinds, it seemed only fitting that The Greatest Minds' shop should have its own little "tribute" to these amazing animals.

The second image, then, is also a snake- this time recoloured and slightly edited in other regards-


 That one is listed under the title "Brown Snake"- in the shop.

The third image is an insect picture listed as "Beetle Conference"- this time, it's a re edit of 2 vintage images, paired with layers of appropriate text in English and Latin. The inspiration for that was various early and mid 19th century accounts of insect watching/ identification by naturalists- back in the days when scientists were all "Mr.", rather than "Dr".

 In general, the images on The Greatest Minds website are very intricate, highly produced creations that rarely have fewer than about 15 layers and typically have about 20-something layers. With the re edits of vintage wildlife pictures, we are going for something simpler and plainer- in some cases, very plain indeed. The beetle picture is a sort of half-way-house because it has a measure of the layering (about 6 layers) and different scripts and some deliberate image distortions, but it is still a long way from the steampunk series pictures you'll find on The Greatest Minds' website and elsewhere in our Red Bubble shop.

There is definitely potential to expand upon the Steampunk material (and some more of that will certainly be added to the shop in due course), not least working with new colourways. That said, it is somehow refreshing to move away from that for a while and work with simpler images. I hope you like the results..

You can find "Beetle Conference" merchandise on Red Bubble [HERE]
For "Blue Serpentine" merchandise on Red Bubble, click [HERE]
"Brown Snake" merchandise can be found [HERE]

The general link for The Greatest Minds' shop is [HERE].

That's all from me for today. 

I realise that's two posts on our Red Bubble shop in a row (and I'll almost certainly come back to this again at some point in the future). In the meantime, though, there's quite a stash of wildlife photographs and a sheaf of random notes, fragments and little articles it would be fun to post. At the moment, I am juggling editing of both pictures and graphics with creating my own content and it is all quite a lot to process simultaneously. One of the great joys of this line of work is that it is never difficult to find ideas. More often, the slow point is finding the time to translate that inspiration into content. Right now, I am in the lovely position of having a great deal to talk about and a fair bit of useable material I'd love to share with you....the one small sticking point is hours in the day and that's a problem, I think everyone can relate to, from all walks of life.

See you next time, when I hope to talk about something a little different.

Best Wishes,

Victoria