In honour of Darwin

Spent around 8-9 hours spread out over a week and a half for the more or less final sketch down below.

following photo was after I guess 4 hours, wasnt feeling confident enough to be able to reproduce the texture of ruff surface which is on the right side of the fossil. So left it there and didnt touch it for 2 days. Deliberately letting this only photo at that stage of sketch uncropped for inclusion of the book itself in the photo. "On the Origin of Species" was indeed the major inspiration behind this attempt! On one fine day, I hope I will be competent enough to sketch portrait of Darwin which is printed there.



I am not yet done with the book, still some 100 pages to go. But man, this is the book, every single civilized educated modern home sapien should read! The name of the book is a little misleading since it neither ventures into the beginning of life nor has it yet touched philosophical side of the origin mystery, which I think it wont touch at all, given the scientific nature of the publication. Origin of THE SPECIES is, as far as I can put into words, a hypothesis on the existence of various species since the beginning, their extinction, the laws governing on the whole massive scale of nature and empirical deduction of those laws with handful of eye-opening examples. In addition to that Darwin does pose, often than rarely with an air of scientific sophistication, some of the very intelligent and important questions against the then widespread creationist theory involving god.

Another thing about the book is the very language. Out of the very few number of books Ive read yet, this was I presume the most attention sucking book. I couldnt read more than 20 pages in one go. Sometimes it took more than 2-3 readings of the same line to extract the implication and understand the context. Used to wonder from where the hell do they get the GRE verbal section passages, damn. Nevertheless there are great number of lyrically eloquent passages and smooth spoken arguments that one cant just help but appreciate the adept writer inside the great naturalist.

Some of the ideas like survival of the fittest etc. might sound cliched to our 21st century brains but definitely it wont stop us being awestruck at the huge amount of work this man must have done and the great many years of his life he must have spent to figure out the most probable, I dare say as of yet the best and the most logical, explanation to the intricate, complex and mammoth of a question that was in front of humanity ever since those advanced primates started being conscious about their own existence and the nature around. You can find some loose notes I took from the book on my Listography page.

Biologist Thomas Huxley was known as Darwin's Bulldog and Richard Dawkins, the most influential figure in current scene of science vs religion, is known as Darwin's Rottweiler for their blaring advocacy and support for Darwin's ideas and theory. Bet they must be feeling proud of it!

Coming back to the sketch, on the 3rd night, figured out a way to get the texture on the paper. by very small dots packed near each other at varying density and value! and well, here is the final piece, dedicated to the man. still a lot to improve, but enough to keep myself motivated!


had to use more than 5 pencils of different hardness, the lovely kneaded eraser and oh yea, hell lotta fuckin patience ;)

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