D. Allan Drummond

@dadrummond.art

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Scientist by day (drummondlab.org), artist by night (dadrummond.art). Sculpture, drawings, and other works. Obsessed with the details of the natural world. Lab posts at @drummondlab.bsky.social 🧪

A massive black fly with folded, intricately, ridged wings, and bright orange spots on its upper abdomen, feeding from mountain mince flowers. The fly’s back legs are outstretched. On her middle legs and feet, you can see tiny leaf- or petal-like packets of pollen hanging down. These are pollinia from a milkweed plant.
A Siberian elm with a long gash up it. The photograph is aimed up the trunk, and all along the length of the gash, there are green June beetles, and other insects, clustered and feeding.
A large group of insects crowded around a slime weep from a Siberian elm. There are June beetles, bald-faced hornets, a hackberry emperor butterfly, many flies, tiny beetles, maggots, etc., in incredible density, a veritable Jurassic Park watering hole
A group of more than a dozen June beetles with bald faced hornets crawling over them, plus assorted flies, all huddled around a bubbling sap-filled opening in a tree.
A monarch caterpillar munching away at the underside of a milkweed leaf. The caterpillar is substantially smaller than my thumb, which can be seen in the very upper part of the frame.
A male nymph fork-tailed bush katydid (Scudderia furcata) on lilac leaves. He’s missing his right hind leg. You can see his ear (hearing organ) on his left foreleg’s tibia 👂🏻
Clubbed Mydas fly (Mydas clavatus) crawling on swamp milkweed blossoms in daylight
A bronze ant being presented a 2-carat "honeydew" (cubic zirconium) by a sterling-silver aphid against a white background. One of five pieces I made that took me a ridiculously long time. The aphid was the hardest, for some reason!
A white-lined sphinx moth sculpture in bronze with a dark patina, perched on my two fingertips.
A Nessus sphinx moth (hummingbird mimic) flitting around and drinking from the flowers of the common milkweed. A honeybee is drinking from the same flowers.
A monarch butterfly caterpillar, with characteristic white, black and yellow stripes and black horns on either end, chomping on a common milkweed flower upside down.
A massive robber fly perched on unopened joe pye blossoms, sucking on the remains of a much-smaller native bee
A flat lay of an earlier version of the grasshopper model, showing all the gray resin 3D printed parts on a dark background. The middle- and forelegs have since been further split up into articulated pieces; here they're combined coxa/femur/tibia with separate ball-jointed feet.
A hand-sized grasshopper nymph resin model laying upside-down in my hand against a gray background. His feetsies are all visible.
An adult katydid exhibiting abdominal pumping, which many large insects do to facilitate gas exchange for respiration. The effect is much like watching a vertebrate breathe heavily.
An adult greater anglewing katydid on a wooden fence. It is very large, bright green, and has a striking resemblance to a leaf, complete with leaf veins on its wings.
A green katydid nymph walking on my hand for a few steps before it jumps off
Picture (by joemcgee23 on iNat) of a ribbon longhorn beetle showing the full spread of its verrrrrrry long antennae
A ribbon longhorn beetle seen from close up, showing its alternating yellow and black stripes and compound eyes interrupted by large, long-segmented antennae proceeding out of the frame
Three 3D printed stag beetles on a white background. One large male has another male flipped over and held aloft on his mandibles while a female looks on. Lucanus elaphus.
Dune ornithopters in the new Dune series are modeled after Orthoptera
An ebony pencil drawing of a ghost crab.
Exomala orientalis, an invasive Oriental beetle, on limestone (Chicago). The beetle is beautiful, cream-colored with brown splotches that shimmer with green iridescence when the light strikes at the right angle.
Various pieces of a jumping spider 3-D printed in purple resin arrayed around a central wax trunk. These are all castable pieces which will sit inside a flask.
Two versions of the jumping spider hindquarters. On the left, in purple castable resin, are the original hind legs and abdomen as a single piece. On the right, in gray resin, is the assembled version of the two hind legs and abdomen as separate parts held together by a nut and bolt.
Jumping spider pieces and parts laid out on a cutting mat. On the left is a single purple resin piece, an abdomen and two hind legs together. On the right, it’s the same anatomy split into three pieces, test-printed in gray resin, with a nut and bolt nearby. The finished spider looms above.
A crosshatched ink drawing of a horseshoe crab in a Moleskine notebook sitting on a picnic table. The 01 Micron pen used to draw it lays across the page. On the previous page, you can see half of a horseshoe crab drawn with thicker lines.
Two pictures of a fresh horseshoe crab molt side-by-side, the left a top view, the right from underneath, in both cases held between my fingers against a white background.
A large fly with brown fuzz on its thorax and a black abdomen with two orange stripes on it sitting on a mint leaf. Common drone fly.
Three casting trees ready for investment sitting on a wooden table. Each casting tree has a central blue pillar made of wax to which multiple jumping spider parts are connected by pink wax pipes.
Close-up view of a dragonfly’s head from the top
Close up view of the top of the dragonfly's head. She seems to have a Sauron-like eye painted in black on her muzzle.
Female green darner dragonfly (Anax junius) perched on my fingers, seen from up close. Her eye has one prominent pseudopupil, and multiple other optical patterns on it.
A green darner dragonfly, wings thrumming, in my hand, seen from close-up focused on its wing bases. The sound is like a motorcycle idling. At the end of the clip, it flies away.
A milkweed beetle (red with black spots) on a brilliant green leaf. The leaf is slightly backlit, so its vein structure is apparent in extraordinary detail.
A pile of purple resin 3D printed spider parts in my open hand over a wooden workbench.
A bronze and silver bug sculpture, highly detailed in structure and anatomical detail with smooth surfaces, on a white background. The bronze is a warm yellow, almost gold.
A short video of me holding and turning over my prototype resin model of a grasshopper nymph. The model is articulated and quite detailed, add in this video, the legs are extended and the hind feet swing a bit loosely.
A nymph short-horned grasshopper (Melanoplus species) on a mint stem. Its pseudopupil makes it appear to be looming right at me.
Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle (Labidomera clivicollis) on a common milkweed stem. The beetle is black and robust, with orange elytra bearing large black splotches.
Two bronze trilobites on my open hand, one crawling up my palm, the other draped over my fingers with its legs and antennae waving in the air.
Four bronze Eldregeops rana trilobites in various positions (curled up, struggling to flip over, and climbing over each other) on a flattish chunk of gray rock. My piece "Life Plate"; the rock is Devonian and contains fossils of this very species. The title is a play on the term "death plate," a flat rock covered with many (dead) fossils.
A close-up shot of the ant and the aphid, showing the details of the mandibles and mouthparts. The aphid’s black glass eye appears to be wide, wide open 😳😅
A large bronze ant and small silver aphid on a white background. The ant has her mandibles open and mouthparts extended, reaching for the 2 carat cubic zirconia honeydew being presented at the back end of the silver aphid.
The silver aphid offers his honeydew to a massive bronze worker ant, her mandibles open and maxillary palps extended.
A sterling silver aphid standing in my palm with its head down and butt lifted up in feeding position. A 2 carat cubic zirconium is prong-mounted at the end of its abdomen as its offered honeydew.
A sterling silver aphid with black glass eyes standing on my palm, about two inches long with long sweeping antennae
A silver aphid a couple inches long with long silver antennae, back legs up in feeding position, standing in my palm.
A jumping spider sculpture in my hand…as large as my hand. Squirrel-chasing-sized jumper.
A fuzzy black male jumping spider on concrete, giving me a quizzical look in his most engaging way.
Alien meme asking the question, but is it art? Except the “r” in art has been replaced with “n”…
A lifelike bronze worker ant standing on a wooden tabletop.
Bronze (metal) jumping spider with black glass eyes, crouching on a reflective black tabletop, looking up.
Pieces and parts of a jumping spider freshly 3D printed in resin, still attached to their web-like supports. The pieces are a beautiful dark, purple, and sit on a wooden bench top.
A sculpture of Gary sitting on my hand. Gary is a nymph male red-legged grasshopper.
Spider anatomy diagram from https://earthlife.net/spider-anatomy-parts-of-spider/ with colored segments labeled.
A jumping spider viewed from underneath, with its fangs and maxillae in focus and eyes out of focus in the background. The fangs are dark brown and emerge from the ends of the chelicerae. The maxillae are lighter, shiny, and just underneath the fangs.
A freshly molted brown cockroach nymph sitting on tree bark. The insect is covered with small droplets of condensation, and its carapace is transparent so that you can see its circulatory system just under the surface.
A guy in a black winter jacket and a maroon hat and scarf, hood up, only eyes showing. The hat has a University of Chicago logo. It me.
A golden chrysalis attached to a dried brown branch. The chrysalis has a large dark hole in it.