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Description
Gawddammit, my hand hurts.

[Who could possibly think that drawing an entire jungle of slime bacteria in pointilism fashion is a good idea? I, apparently... while still under the influence of potent medication. Apparently, that delusion lasted for as long as it took me to render the first 1-inch square of the drawing, at which point I wondered, "What the f*** did I get myself into..."]

Myxobacteria are fascinating little buggers. Inhabiting the soil, they tend to travel in swarms, keeping in communication by means of quorum sensing (aka microbe-speak). At times when food is scarce, the bacteria aggregate to form fruiting bodies, consisting of sporangia (cysts) sprouting from the termini of stalks, that project far above the surface. Within the sporangia, vegetative cells then transform into myxospores, built to last until resources become more plentiful once more.

With that kind of information at hand, I couldn't resist doing a landscape of myxobacterial er, congress. The idea was to draw something that evoked memories of old-fashioned textbook illustrations... only I obviously got a little carried away there, haha. The fruiting bodies are based upon various scanning electron micrographs of Chondromyces (light microscopy cannot resolve the fine details, which run to under 1 μm); I've tried to include all the developmental stages in the fruiting body formation - although, Force help me, I do not claim any sort of expertise with regard to their life cycle (so if you who are viewing this *are* a myxobacteria expert, please disregard any errors or misguided assumptions I may have made).

And oh, for the record, I didn't draw this picture; I hammered out the bloody thing with a mechanical pencil, at roughly the rate of 2 dots per beat of Pulp's Disco 2000 , which was the primary driving force behind the picture. (That, and Razzmatazz ). Yes, the darkest bits are all dots as well. In fact, I estimate, with reasonable confidence, that the bloody picture contains more dots than there are particles of sand all over our entire country.

Tech Notes

Campap 200gsm drawing paper
Faber Castell 0.5mm mechanical pencil
Several gallons of hairspray for fixative (half of which is now in my lungs, thanks to accidental inhalation)
11.2" x 8.2"

The scale in the bottom right corner was inserted digitally (because I ran out of paper), and gives a rough guide to the actual size of the fruiting bodies*.

* It does NOT indicate the size of the drawing. For gizkas' sake, ~DobbyKnits ...

Description
Gawddammit, my hand hurts.

[Who could possibly think that drawing an entire jungle of slime bacteria in pointilism fashion is a good idea? I, apparently... while still under the influence of potent medication. Apparently, that delusion lasted for as long as it took me to render the first 1-inch square of the drawing, at which point I wondered, "What the f*** did I get myself into..."]

Myxobacteria are fascinating little buggers. Inhabiting the soil, they tend to travel in swarms, keeping in communication by means of quorum sensing (aka microbe-speak). At times when food is scarce, the bacteria aggregate to form fruiting bodies, consisting of sporangia (cysts) sprouting from the termini of stalks, that project far above the surface. Within the sporangia, vegetative cells then transform into myxospores, built to last until resources become more plentiful once more.

With that kind of information at hand, I couldn't resist doing a landscape of myxobacterial er, congress. The idea was to draw something that evoked memories of old-fashioned textbook illustrations... only I obviously got a little carried away there, haha. The fruiting bodies are based upon various scanning electron micrographs of Chondromyces (light microscopy cannot resolve the fine details, which run to under 1 μm); I've tried to include all the developmental stages in the fruiting body formation - although, Force help me, I do not claim any sort of expertise with regard to their life cycle (so if you who are viewing this *are* a myxobacteria expert, please disregard any errors or misguided assumptions I may have made).

And oh, for the record, I didn't draw this picture; I hammered out the bloody thing with a mechanical pencil, at roughly the rate of 2 dots per beat of Pulp's Disco 2000 , which was the primary driving force behind the picture. (That, and Razzmatazz ). Yes, the darkest bits are all dots as well. In fact, I estimate, with reasonable confidence, that the bloody picture contains more dots than there are particles of sand all over our entire country.

Tech Notes

Campap 200gsm drawing paper
Faber Castell 0.5mm mechanical pencil
Several gallons of hairspray for fixative (half of which is now in my lungs, thanks to accidental inhalation)
11.2" x 8.2"

The scale in the bottom right corner was inserted digitally (because I ran out of paper), and gives a rough guide to the actual size of the fruiting bodies*.

* It does NOT indicate the size of the drawing. For gizkas' sake, ~DobbyKnits ...