Xenonaut's World of Chaos

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Introducing the Xenonaut Museum of Art History– a comprehensive archive of my sketchbooks from the past 4 years.

The Xenonaut Museum of Art History - Google Drive
drive.google.com

From the day I could pick up a pencil, I was drawing pictures. I started with lines and shapes and continued on to creatures and characters. I’ve never really stopped.
However, I’ve always been reluctant to share my work with others beyond my immediate social circle. I felt that each drawing I made was not as representative of me as the larger whole, and without that larger whole how others viewed and judged me would be based on an incomplete premise.
As I move on to a new chapter of my life, I feel like a look back at where I’ve been and how far I’ve come is past due. A first step in sharing my work, and through that who I am, with the world.
Therefore, I have gathered most of my illustrative work from the past four years (amounting to over 1300 drawings in total), arranged it in a rough chronological order, and spent a few weeks converting it into a digital format that can be viewed in an online archive.
All these drawings have been sorted into folders representing each of my notebooks, allowing for easy viewing. I will add that the second half is generally more high-quality than the first (as is wont to be when one hones one’s craft over time), but there are some pieces where I think I did a good job even in my earliest sketchbooks.
Of these I will be posting some of what I consider to be the best and/or most interesting from each folder, adding context or commentary if relevant. These will be tagged #curator’s pick, and I will eventually arrange them into a Moments thread.
Some of the pieces omitted from the #curator’s pick may be because I seek to flesh out their concepts into more complete works– games, movies, etc.
Some pieces may be fanart of things I admired at the time, and most of the time still admire now. This will be fully acknowledged, and I take no credit for the concepts behind these pieces.
In a few months’ time I will also be adding 2-3 notebooks of my more recent drawings to the archive, as well as posting what I consider the most interesting of this batch to my social media. This will continue onto my contemporary work (some of which I’ve posted already), and hopefully over time this will become an overall archive of my art going forward.
All of this is the full picture of myself that I have wanted to share for so long, but for so long have been unable to.
I hope that you will enjoy or at least be interested in tracing the development of my art, and in doing so see the whole picture of who I am and what I can do.

Pinned Post art concept art web archive archive sketchbook sketching pencil drawing creature design character design horror sci fi fantasy artists on tumblr
bogleech
bogleech

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Did you guys know the size difference between an adult worker driver ant and the queen? Did you know their mom’s head alone was that much bigger than their entire body?

This photo is featured in the photographer’s book about army ants:

https://www.amazon.com/Army-Ants-Natures-Ultimate-Hunters/dp/067424155X

The crazy thing about “army ants” is that there are just several unrelated ant species that display exactly the same set of behaviors so it’s sometimes just referred to as “army ant syndrome.”

bogleech
typhlonectes

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BIG DISCOVERY IN ENTOMOLOGY!

An extraordinary case of elytra loss in Coleoptera (Elateroidea: Lycidae): discovery and placement of the first anelytrous adult male beetle

Vinicius S Ferreira, Felipe Francisco Barbosa, Milada Bocakova, Alexey Solodovnikov

Insects are one of the few groups of animals that developed the ability of active flight. Such mobility allowed the group to successfully explore and thrive in nearly all kinds of ecological niches.

At the same time, during the evolutionary history of insects, due to high costs of wing development, flight was lost independently in many groups. In beetles, the reduction or complete loss of hind wings has been reported in multiple lineages, especially in several extreme paedomorphic and larviform females, mainly in Elateroidea, in which not only the hind wings but also the elytra are lost.

However, the complete absence of elytra in adult males was hitherto unknown, despite nearly half a million described species in Coleoptera.

In this study, we report the discovery of Xenomorphon baranowskii gen. et sp. nov., the first completely anelytrous and wingless adult male beetle, belonging to the family Lycidae (Coleoptera: Elateroidea). Xenomorphon baranowskii is illustrated, described, and provisionally placed in Calopterini, based on our morphology-based phylogenetic analyses.

We discuss the possible scenarios that could lead to such a rare event, when a beetle loses its elytra, and its evolutionary consequences.

Read the paper here:

extraordinary case of elytra loss in Coleoptera (Elateroidea: Lycidae): discovery and placement of the first anelytrous adult male beetle | Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

bogleech

Are you people SEEING this shit!!! HE'S anyletrous !!!!!!

bogleech
onenicebugperday

Yellow humpback fly, Psilodera valid, Acroceridae (small-headed flies)

Found in South Africa

Photos by mariedelport

bogleech

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The larvae of these flies are spiny, hairy maggots that can run (using an inchworm style motion) and jump and all on their own they hunt down spiders, then enter the spider through a leg joint and live parasitically in their organs for sometimes years, depending on the spider’s lifespan

library-seraph
sixteenseveredhands

Lamarckdromia beagle: these crabs wear living sea sponges as protective "hats;" after selecting a sponge, the crab trims it, drapes the tailored sponge across its carapace, and then carries it around

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Last year, a newly-classified species (referred to as Lamarckdromia beagle) was discovered off the coast of Western Australia. Like all other members of the genus Lamarckdromia, this species is part of the Dromiidae family, which contains many different types of crabs that are known to use living sea sponges and ascidians to protect themselves from predators. These crabs are often collectively referred to as "sponge crabs."

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Lamarckdromia beagle: this new species is covered in a dense, shaggy layer of "fur," which is actually made up of hair-like structures called setae

According to this article from The Guardian:

Dr. Andrew Hosie, a curator of crustacea and worms at the Western Australian Museum, said sponge crabs had hind legs that were specially adapted for holding their protective hats.

“The sponge or ascidian just keeps growing and will mould to the shape of the crab’s back,” he said. “It will never attach … it forms a nice cap that fits quite snugly to the top of the crab."

Similar to how hermit crabs use shells for protection, the sponges help Dromiidae crabs to camouflage from predators such as octopuses and other crabs.

The sponges can be bigger than the crab itself, and also provide a chemical deterrent. “Some of the compounds that these sponges are producing are very noxious,” Hosie said. “There’s not a lot of active predators that would be interested in munching through a sponge just to get to a crab.”

Sponge crabs in general come in many different shapes and sizes; L. beagle (pictured above) has a uniquely dense, shaggy coat of "fur" covering its body, but other members of the genus Lamarckdromia have a much less shaggy appearance, and there are many sponge crabs that have no layer of "fur" at all.

Some examples of the other sponge crabs within the Dromiidae family:

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I know this isn't exactly the type of arthropod that I'd normally discuss on my blog (given that it's not a moth or some other insect) but technically crustaceans are arthropods, and these ones are really weird/interesting...so I figured that I might as well just go with it.

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