D. Allan Drummond Art
@dadrummondart
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Sculpture, drawings, and other works emerging from an obsession with the details of the natural world. IG/🧵/BSky @ dadrummond. Want to scrape? Ask.
Chicago, IL
Joined April 2018
What we all need right now is to pull apart a bronze trilobite with magnetized parts and then put it back together, amirite
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Brittle star crawling behavior is unreal (yes, that is my hand). If Giger designed a starfish…
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Closeup of one of my first pieces, a scarab pendant…chain goes through the forelegs. Will be part of my shop opening this fall!
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My university just installed this massive black sphere and I’m fixing to install some massive bronze beetles, what say you 🪲
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Metal bugs are better bugs
Coming soon in metal. Because, obviously, the world needs more metal planthoppers the size of guinea pigs. #3Dprinting
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These toys are so fantastic, how is this possible
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Handshake with a giant metal mantis. My piece “Huntress,” bronze and neodymium magnets.
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I’m Allan, a prof by day, artist by night, working in metal, 3D printing, and pen & ink…who generally thinks arthropods should be larger 🔬❤️ #PortfolioDay
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The life cycle of the largest stag beetle in North America, Lucanus elaphus, in solid bronze, on a nice piece of rotted wood. 1/5
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😱 the absolutely titanic Sphex pensylvanicus—the Great Black Wasp—sipping prairie milkweed in my yard. Feast your eyes.
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Why yes, I did sculpt all those little ant mouthparts that nobody even knows are there 🔬🐜
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Mother/Daughter (Cell Division). A budding yeast mother cell making a new daughter cell. Steel, bronze, silver, and apatite gemstones. By day I’m a cell biologist/biochemist, and had a dream of making a cutaway view in metal. From my first solo show a few years ago in Seattle 🤓
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Build your own bronze trilobite (sound on!). Cryptolithus bellulus, plus rare-earth magnets 🧲
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Poser… 😎 Playing with articulation on the mantis before I sent her off into the world. Miss her
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Moth, not wasp. Zoom in and see the feathery scales all over its body! Stunningly good mimic.
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why not bug *and* diamond
Seriously, if some future fiancee wants to impress me, forget the diamond. Propose to me with an exquisite bug sculpture. Make it an isopod or jumping spider? TRUE LOVE FOREVER!!!! 😍.
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Well, this crosses my red line. Researcher using ungodly AI-generated BS image to publicize their trilobite-related work. Totally shameful. As a professor and a trilobite artist, I'm doubly horrified. You can date trilobite origins but don't know what trilobites look like?.
Our new paper uses Bayesian astrochronology to date the origin of trilobites with extreme precision. Read it here:
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For #TrilobiteTuesday here’s Eldredgeops rana, both enrolled and struggling to right herself. In case you’re wondering, this is what actual trilobites look like, through the eyes of an informed, detail-oriented human artist 🔬
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She’s all in pieces…my first bronze jumping spider, Salticus scenicus, before and after assembly, patination, and polishing 🕷️🖤
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Please take the time to understand what is happening here.
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A jumping spider (Phidippus) nailing a fly—in slow motion. Shot on my phone coming home from work. The fly seems already snarled in some webbing… Stay till the end to see why jumpers put down drag lines! Probably my best nature-in-action moment ever, a few years back.
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Behold the chonkiful plumposity and absolute uniticity of this furocious bumble
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Meet my cicada for the first time! I am in love with her already ❤️
What should I sculpt next? 🛠️.
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Butterflies made from wood. No coloring, no paint. The colors come from different types of wood, painstakingly cut, stacked, recut, and so on, or inserted as dowels into tiny holes and sliced off to leave a dot. Jaw-dropping artistry. and the butterflies are beautiful! 🔬🦋.
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does it hurt, knowing you’ll never be able to hold a living trilobite?
does it hurt, knowing you'll never be able to hold a living pterosaur?
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Trilobites enroll, a behavior+body plan which has independently evolved many times (in crustaceans—pillbugs!, in millipedes, even in roaches). Here’s my reconstruction of a 390-million-year-old enrolling trilobite in its two extreme positions. (Not articulated yet; it’s coming.)
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My first jumping spider, in pieces and fully assembled. "Scenicus," Salticus scenicus, young female, bronze and black glass, 2018. Still love and miss her 🖤
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My still-unfinished Opiliones (harvestman/daddy longlegs) draft in bronze and black glass…yes, she’s missing the key bits 🫣 (she’s gonna be biiiig)
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Cell division in steel, bronze, silver, and apatite gemstones. Humankind’s ancient microbial ally, the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae of bread and wine fame, performing its greatest feat: making more of itself.
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I nicknamed her Plant Shark 🌱🦈 .(open full size for scale)
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Proudhopper: a fulgorid planthopper in bronze with sterling silver wings. Exceptional schnoz 👃🏻 and when I flip him over you can see the gears between his hind legs…these really occur in nature in the nymph form, to coordinate a powerful jump 🔬 From my second show.
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Remembering warmer times with these prickly babies 🧲🦀
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The artist/photographer is Levon Biss (& levon is on IG). Have noticed that this account rarely credits. I thought it was mostly original work, but no, sadly not. Sigh.
it’s so cool how stick insect eggs look like little clay pots and have so much variety
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To get the face on my bronze mantis to look right, I sculpted all the mouthparts separately and then combined them into a single piece. Here’s the exploded view and the finished piece 🔬
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Just in case you didn’t know I proposed to @sepalmerNeuro by giving her a sculpted-from-scratch solid silver cockroach nymph at @chicagobotanic and she said YES ❤️🤓❤️
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Little bronze trilobite for a very patient collector
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A bronze carpenter ant. I mainly just make things that I wish existed. Very fun to bring into the world…
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I love him and now I have to let him go! Off to his forever home. Nice doggie.
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Stout. Not to be trifled with.
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Cicada, ink in sketchbook. One of my favorite animals, and a terrific challenge to capture with crosshatching. Quite happy with this one.
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My favorite trilobite reconstruction that’s not yet made it into metal, Bellacartwrightia whiteleyi.
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Welcome new followers! Remember, if you offer someone a trilobite, it’s polite to roll it over on its back so they can perform a squirm test, the easiest way to assess trilobite health 👍🏻🤓❤️
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Horseshoe crabs are cute little babies… and they get big! Here’s an older female, an incredible creature, my hands again for comparison. 🧲🦀
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Time for me to show off my unfinished bronze harvestman again…look for the claws!
This is just one of the reasons I find Harvestmen so fascinating. This is a ventral view of a harvestman showing its versatile chelicerae, the tiny crab-like claws that it uses to dismantle its food and feed itself. Amazing!.#OurOpiliones
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Bronze mantis detail. I mounted her arms on rare-earth magnets which act as ball joints 🛠
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Let the resurrection begin
Incredible new information about Cambrian trilobite soft tissues just out. Look at these scans. the central head structures (hypostome/labrum/mouth) are so clearly resolved in these half-billion-year-old specimens. Jaw-dropping (no pun intended)
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Advertise your account with one image.
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Raptorial forelegs have independently evolved many times in insects. which is a jargon-y way to say, "Lots of insects have front legs like a praying mantis, even though they aren't closely related to praying mantises." Let's see. 1/5
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Second bronze thorn bug in an edition of three, work in progress. Casting the wings has been an odyssey. Here I’m testing fit before cleaning up the shell.
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Articulation coming along 🛠️ has been a huge challenge to get the right movement without obvious joints. Quite happy with how he’s moving now 🦗
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The trilobite Hoplolichas furcifer in bronze and fully reconstructed in ink. A spiny little tank. #InverteFest
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Fresh-caught bronze Ceraurus trilobite. Always a joy to see the spring emergence!
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Rare to see two on the same branch this time of year! (Edition complete)
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Always loved these flat-lay trilobite arrangements, made my own version in solid bronze…
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A perfect horseshoe crab molt. The growing animal slips out of its skin like a new car emerging from under an old car’s hood. This is what’s left: a perfect ghost of the creature.
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Mother nature putting me out of a job 🤩.
This is Bradyporus dasypus, it's English name should be the Bronze tank bush-cricket! This is endemic to the Balkans, it likes open glades and grassy areas amongst scrub. A really beautiful species, it's flightless and looks like it is constructed of beaten metal.
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Inside a cell 🔬 My cutaway model of a dividing cell with all its delicate machinery, mother producing daughter in late anaphase. (Spot the mitochondria…) Available at if you’d like your own!
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Incredible 🦀 by @kani10yen…fully articulated in so many ways I will try to show you 🤯. This is the Japanese art of jizai okimono (free-moving sculpture) realized in the era of 3D scanning…every joint is specially engineered, built around the axes of the animal 🔥 1/
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“Thorn” from my last solo show. Bronze and sterling silver. Better known by her nickname, Plant Shark 🌱🦈
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Paraceraurus exsul, peak of trilobite elegance, looking sharp in bronze
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It’s happening. #cicada season. My sweetheart found this nymph crawling up an old oak in the park a couple seasons ago. We took it home to the light box, watched it transform, released it afterwards. Such a delight! Still my favorite.
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Incredible new information about Cambrian trilobite soft tissues just out. Look at these scans. the central head structures (hypostome/labrum/mouth) are so clearly resolved in these half-billion-year-old specimens. Jaw-dropping (no pun intended)
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Mother/Daughter: cell division in bronze, steel, & silver, with apatite gemstones. The larger mother cell buds to produce daughters, leaving a round scar. You can see her passing along chromosomes along with other cellular structures like mitochondria. #sciartportfolioweek
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Unfinished project: hummingbird clearwing moth, Hemaris thysbe 🦋
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The climb begins. Neotibicen nymph (actually adult squished into robotic nymph armor at this point) headed up to molt and fly. #InverteFest
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First half-century in the books. Please send your best critters to this old man!
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A horde of bronze trilobites, mostly headed off to find their missing legs 😅
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I like bugs, things made to look like bugs, people who make things that look like bugs, pictures of bugs, information about bugs, bug-adjacent animals, bug ancestors, drawings and paintings and sculptures of bugs, 3D CT scans of bug anatomy, biomechanical studies of bug 1/N.
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Cicada killer, Sphecius speciosus. Apex creature. (She’s feeding on sap; the cicadas she kills are for her babies)
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