Mondolithic's cyborg Darwin sketch

Kenn Brown of Mondolithic Studios recently alerted me to this pre-production sketch of his for what will undoubtedly become a stunning painting:


This 'proof of concept' digital rendering takes a well known portrait of Charles Darwin and presents him as a synthesis of man and machine. Brown notes that it will likely go through a number of iterations before he commits it to canvas.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing where he takes it from here. Brown writes:

I was quite surprised that this concept had never been realized, and I scoured the net for several hours to ensure I was not duplicating another artists concept - and thankfully came up with nothing even close. It seems like an obvious solution given the growing emergence of transhumanist technologies and artificial inteligence augmentation, as an inevitable evolutionary step in human kind.

We really enjoy working out our paintings using digital technology and then taking it back into the analogue world for somthing a bit more permenant as an Oil on Canvas painting. It allows us to quickly realize a piece, and work out all of the elements like colour, composition - which lays down a solid foundation for creating a painting quickly and efficiently.

By the way, the concept was partly inspired by a recent illustration they did for the latest cover of Scientific American: