How spots are formed

According to Study.coms post on patterns in nature, pattern is defined as, “a consistent form, design, or expression that is not random”.  The patterns that are favoured by natural selection will become common across a species, but how do these patterns come about?

Six spot burnett moth Zygaena filipendulae showing spots

Alan Turing explored this problem in “The Chemical basis of morphogenesis” in 1952.  He discovered that chemicals moving across embryonic cells cause patterns.  There are activators (which increase the amount of two chemicals which mix together to create dark pigment).  And there are inhibitors (which decrease the concentration of the two chemicals, prohibiting production of pigment.)  When this occurs in alternating areas you see spots.   The colour is produced by melanophore or chromatophore cells.  This is known as the Turing Model, and has been explored repeatedly since the 1950s, notably by Jeremy Green in Developmental Biology in 2015. For more on the Turing Model click here.

Why are spots formed?

As discussed in my overview of pattern in nature, patterns are formed for a variety of reasons.  Some are used to protect from predation and camouflage.  Some are used to hide predators.  Some trick potential predators into avoiding an animal which resembles another species that has dangerous traits or an unpleasant flavour (Batesian mimicry).  Patterns can be used to attract mates or frighten off competition looking to steal your mates or territory.  So why do fish wear spots?  Below are some examples.

Wasp beetle showing Batesian mimicry.  It is harmless but resembles a wasp which puts off potential predators.

Trout and spots

The Brown trout Salmo trutta are covered in beautiful black and red spots, outlined in white.

Brown trout Salmo trutta

There are various reasons for this design.  The spots become brighter during mating which suggests they play a role in mate selection, and fish flash their colourful spots at potential competitors for females in lateral and frontal displays (Tim Travers 2014).

Close up of Brown trout pattern

They also help camouflage the fish, breaking up their outline from above and blending in with both reflected light and the speckled stones of shallow stream beds.

Brown trout swimming, seen from above

Tim Travers also suggests that the trout’s environment has led to the spots.  Evolving in crystal clear cold and glacial water, markings are visible to potential mates and rivals and therefore worth investing in.

Brown trout Salmo trutta sketch

Salmon and spots

Another spotted fish is the Salmon, Salmo salar.

Life cycle of the Salmon

Compared to similar fish in the Salmo family, such as Brown or Sea trout, the Salmon is relatively clear of spots.  However, they appear on the youngest fish, the parr, as red dots on the flanks and black dots on the back and dorsal fin.

Salmon parr

The next life stage, the smolt, has less spots, only a few on the back and gill cover.

Salmon smolt

The final stage sees the adult female hen salmon with lots of dark spots, and the male, in breeding colours, sporting red and brown and black dots.

Hen salmon

Male, or cock salmon also develop spots at mating time.  These are a complex network of red and black dots, overlaid on other blotches of colour.  Some anglers call the pattern a “tartan” because of its complexity.

Cock salmon

For more on the lifecycle of salmon look at my earlier blog or the Atlantic Salmon Trust’s page.

Salmon spots on wild vs farmed fish

There’s interesting research that suggests farmed salmon are up to 7 times more spotty than wild salmon.  As these patterns are laid down during the early smolting stage and are stable throughout a lifetime, seeing how spotty a river fish is can be used to figure out whether it is wild or an escaped animals (How does a salmon get its spots 2018 Jorgenson, Solberg and Glover).  The same consistency of pattern allows researches to identify individual fish, and could lead to less invasive and stressful forms of research on wild populations (FishBio 2018).

Puffer fish and spots

Pufferfish and box fish are often covered in little spots.  I could not find research pointing to what function these markings serve, they could be for communication, warning, mate choice, but are probably not a form of camouflage.  Perhaps it relates to the toxicity of some species and their ability to puff up by inhaling water if attacked?

Starry puffer Arothron stellatus

Sometimes these can be concentric circles of colour. In Diffusiophoresis-enhanced Turing patterns 2023, Benjamin Alessio explains how these spots are formed.  Based on the Turning model, diffusiophoresis shows how moving molecules bring other nearby molecules along with them.  If these molecules are colour-producing chromatophores, you  get different areas of colour.  This research was done on the Ornate box fish, a close relative of the puffer fish.

Turbot

Turbot are another spotted fish.  They are members of the flat fish family and have replaced their scales with skin and bony bumps called tubercles.  Turbot are able to change colour, literally changing their spots.  The skin has chromatophores producing black, red and yellow pigment.  Although these cells are in the same position, they can be turned on and off, allowing the fish to change colour in a matter of minutes or in some species, seconds.

Juvenile Turbot turbot Scophthalmus maximus 

They are also remarkable in that their bodies twist as they develop, meaning the adult has one eye which has migrated 90 degrees around its body.  This allows the fish to be incredibly flat.  Adult fish flap to stir up sand, and once a sprinkling of this lies on top of the spotted fish, it is indistinguishable from the sandy bottom of the sea floor.  Turbot spots make this fish a master of camouflage.

Adult turbot Scophthalmus maximus

For more on flatfish camouflage, have a look at Changeable Camouflage: How well can flounder resemble the colour and spatial scale of substrates in their natural habitats? by D. Akkaynak et al 2017 in Royal Society Open Science.

Sketch of the Plaice Pleuronectes platessa another colour-changing flatfish species

Leopard shark spots

The Leopard shark is also known as the Zebra shark because it has stripes when it is young.  These morph into spots as the shark ages.  It is thought that these different stages allow the markings to fufill different functions.

When young, the stripes break up the outline of the baby shark.  Lots of striped sharks together are confusing for a predator meaning it is less likely to fix on one individual animal.  This is known as the Predator dilution effect.  The markings could also send a message to territorial fish, informing them that a baby shark is in no way a threat and therefore is not worth fighting.  It could even be a form of Batesian mimicry as the stripes resemble those on venomous sea snakes. (The Sandy Zebra Shark: A new colour morph in Copeia by Dahl 2019)

Zebra or Leopard shark Stegostoma tigrinum

The shark undergoes ontogenetic change before adulthood.  This means a change in appearance which is genetically linked to the age of the animal.  The adult shark emerges with distinctive spots.  Because this change occurs at sexual maturity, it’s been suggested that the spots may be involved in mate choice and breeding. (A Zebra that changes its spots by Sophie Maycock 2020).

Conclusion

This is the very tip of the iceberg when considering spotted fish.  Stingrays, Zebrafish, Triggerfish, Grouper, Guppies, Cichlid, and Surgeonfish can all be covered in dots.  It is much easier to find out what a fish with spots looks like than it is to untangle why it wears this livery.  Whether monotone or multicoloured, single spots or concentric rings and circles, one thing is certain.  The patterns on fish are stunning, and a real joy to illustrate and research.

For a whole lot more on colouration in fish, read Price et al’s overview in Pigments Patterns and Fish Behaviour in Zebrafish 2015.

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This blog sets out to show some of the diversity of packaging my illustrations have appeared on.  I also hope to show how clever the designers are, and the difference you may see between an original illustration, and one on a final product.

Food packaging

Some of you may have ready my recent blog about the Swedish Flora margarine range.

This was a re-use of my existing botanical illustrations of clover in packaging design.  The designers were very clever, if not botanically accurate.  Imperceptibly, they used the white clover leaves with the pink clover flower-head.

Original clover illustration

Flora tub with rounded white clover leaves alongside the Trifolium pratense leaflets.

Sometimes the illustration is used very small.  This was the case for the packaging of the Romano tomato range by ICA supermarkets in Sweden.  My illustration of the White-tailed bumble bee, Bombus leucorum features.

White-tailed bumble bee Bombus leucorum

You may have to look closely to spot it on the packaging below!  When you license your illustrations for packaging, you no longer have any say in how the illustration is used, unless you stipulate this in your contract.  I didn’t object to this usage at all, although I slightly wish they hadn’t removed the poor bee’s legs.

Drink Packaging

On a smaller scale, my illustrations for the Hedgerow Handbook by Adele Nozedar were recently used on her beautiful foraged gin labels.  She only made 200 bottles.  It sold out almost instantly and was delicious.  I loved the way my illustrations complimented the subtle colour of the gin.

Hedgerow Handbook Gin by Adele Nozedar with my sketchbook behind.

Sometimes I’ll sort out the business side of licensing an illustration for packaging, but never see it on the product.  This happened recently with Lerøy Seafood.  They’re a well-established Swedish company, and I was only too happy to license my hen salmon illustration for use on their packaging.  To date, I’ve not seen it in context.  It’s possible I’ve not been looking in the right places. I hope they will use the illustration some day, after all, they paid for the right to do so!

Pet food

One of my most enjoyable (and challenging) recent commissions was to illustrate a series of animals for Spot Farms pet food packaging.  I plan to write a blog about it pretty soon, I’ll keep you posted.

This involved creating a series of illustrations which stood alone, and which worked as a set for the Wild Shreds brand of pet foods.

Below is the packaging (illustrations copyright Spot Farms 2019).

And here is the original of the White-tailed deer.  As you can see, the packaging hasn’t tweaked or altered the original illustration much at all.

It’s interesting, the designer I collaborated with was certain about what he wanted.  This meant lots of alterations in the early stages, but no major alterations once the final illustration was delivered.

White-tailed deer (copyright Spot farms 2019)

Mugs

Not long ago, my botanical illustration of hops was used on a mug produced by Mugly.  It was a straight re-use of an existing illustration, but was a treat to see my illustration used in this context.  This is the illustration of the hop plant, Humus lupulus.

Below is a promotional photo of the mug, taken from the Mugly Love website.

One of the first packaging design jobs I got was a couple of decades ago.  I worked on the illustrations for a series of mugs showing the wildlife of different continents.  I enjoyed the work immensely and the series of six mugs (produced by Dunoon Ceramics) were in circulation for quite a few years.

Here is the artwork for the North American mug.

And below you can see it in context, on the mug.

Packaging Design: Mock-ups

Many years ago, I wanted my illustrations to be used in packaging.  Things have changed now, but back then I’d not been fortunate enough to have my work appear on labels.

I followed advice from some industry advisers, and mocked up a few products.  If you do this, as an aspiring illustrator, be certain to make it crystal clear that these are only mock-ups, and not the product as it actually is.  You need to be sure you stay clean and don’t end up infringing anyone’s copyright by mistake.

Mock up of Herbal tea

Mock-up of Talcom powder packaging

Packaging mock-up: Gift wrap

The most successful of these mock-ups didn’t involve dropping my illustrations into anyone else’s product.  I popped lots of my illustrations onto sheets of wrapping paper.  Ihope that someday someone might decide they like the look of this gift wrap, and produce it commercially.  I’d take enormous pleasure in wrapping birthday presents in sheets printed with my own beetle, flower, or butterfly illustrations.

Conclusion

Over the years, my illustrations have been used in lots of different packaging projects.  Frequently it’s re-use of existing illustrations.  Sometimes it’s new work, especially commissioned for that job.  However it appears, I always find it exciting and fascinating to see my work in a totally new context.  It’s certainly something I’d like to do more of, even if it doesn’t mean I get my illustrations onto wrapping paper!

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 The Glanwye Fishery is loved by anglers who catch numerous Atlantic salmon and other fish there.  It’s run by a group of fishermen who support (and are members of) the Wye and Usk Foundation.

Starting on the Glanwye map

Initially I was shown the existing map of the fishing sites on the Glanwye stretch, and we discussed how we’d like the finished piece to look.  It needed to have the river and fishing spots on, but also to include species that were often seen there, and some vignettes of the beautiful views.

Glanwye Fishery Map

I spent a couple of happy afternoons with a camera and notebook, walking the fishery and deciding on the best views to include.  I find landscape painting more challenging than illustrating plants and animals.  So wanted to be sure I chose sites that were easily recognisable, and that I’d enjoy painting them.

Photo of Church House Pool

Salmon Life cycle

Various stages of the salmon life cycle needed to be included; I worked these up first of all, and put them at the base of the map.

I learnt a lot from the client and from researching the Atlantic Salmon Salmo salar (please see my blog for more on Salmon life stages).

Salmon life stages

What species and landscapes to include on the Glanwye map?

Next came the job of deciding what species of plant and animal to include.  My client has an in-depth knowledge of the area, so could easily suggest animals and knew where they were most commonly seen.  The otter needed to be at Craig Dhu; the wagtails are much in evidence at Church House Pool.  Prevelent species such as red kite, swallow, and kingfisher could be incuded wherever was most convenient.  I added a couple of flowers I saw while researching, and then it was time to draw up the pencil rough.

The layout was a challenge as there had to be plenty of room for text, and the landscape vignettes needed to leave room for the plants and animal illustrations.  I painted up the river and mapped fields lightly, then began to work on the landscapes.

Glanwye Fishery in progress

With rivers, the main object is to try to make the scene look watery, and not to over-paint and swallow too much of the white page with unneccessary colour.  I think the view of Church House Pool worked best.

View of Church House Pool

Once I’d done the landscapes it was a joy to work on the animals and plants, ; I began at the top left and worked down the piece.  The terror is always that you’ll mess up a detail towards the end, luckily I got away with it.  I particularly enjoyed painting the glinting kingfisher and the swans.

Kingfisher Alcedo atthis

Detail with Speedwell Veronica chamaedrys, Mute swans Cygnus olor & Red kite Milvus milvus

Adding the text

With all the illustration work complete, it was time to consider the text.  I traced out the letters for the titles, and painted them up in a dark purplish brown.

Glanwye Salmon fishery in progress

Then I have to admit to importing help for the remaining lettering.My mother is a fine artist and has always prided herself on her beautiful writing; it seemed the perfect time to use these qualities.

My mother (Susan Harper) helping out by doing the lettering on the Glanwye project

This completed the illustration of the Glanwye fishery.  Now all I need to do is figure out how on earth to get such a big piece of work to the client!  It was a brilliant job to work on, and I’m really pleased with the end result.

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A key resource has been the Atlantic Salmon Trust, where both visual and written references are readily available.

Salmon Parr

Salmon emerge from eggs in freshwater rivers, such as the Wye.  Until they absorb their egg sacs their known as alveolin.  After, they’re called fry.  If they escape predation and grow to about 2inches long, they are called Parr.  Sometimes they’re called or Fingerlings.

Salmon parr

A Salmon parr needs to escape predation.  So it develops camaflauging “parr marks” (bands of colour) across their backs.  These break up their shape and help the fish avoid being eaten by heron, mink, goosander, and other fish such as trout.

There is often confusion within the angling community when it comes to distinguishing between Salmon and Brown Trout (Salmo trutta) as the two species closely resemble each other.  With the young Parr, the main differences are that the salmon has a more streamlined shape, a deeper fork to its tail, a longer pectoral fin, a sharper snout and smaller mouth than a young Trout, and has no orange on the adipose fin (at the rear, to the back)

A Salmon Parr will only sport a couple of spots on its gill cover (often just one large spot), and its parr or fingerling markings are quite crisply defined.

Salmon smolt

After a couple of years of living in freshwater, the young salmon undergoes some major alterations to its body and chemistry which enable it to migrate to the salty waters of the Atlantic Ocean where the fish will feed amd grow.  These changes are called “smoltification” and occur in esturine waters where the young fish gather in shoals before setting out to the open sea.

Visually, the change from a Parr to a Smolt is primarily a loss of the stripes seen on a parr, and a change of colour as the fish becomes silvery.  This is caused by guanine crystals which form a layer in the skin and obscure the spots and fingerling markings (although these are still visible on the gill covers).

Salmon smolt

Their bodies elongate and their fins darken.  The silvery scales can be rubbed off easily.  It’s hard to distinguish between the sexes until the males became ready to breed.

Adult salmon

As adults, the Salmon will return to the freshwater of their birth to breed.  When they first appear, as “Fresh Run Salmon” both sexes are bright silver and pretty similar, with easily detachable scales.  You can often tell how long an adult salmon has been in fresh water by the birghtness of its silver colouring, and from the sea lice which die when their hosts switch from salty to fresh water.  A silvery adult with near complete sea lice in situ will have only just left the marine environment; one with less of a gleam and more degraded (or without) sea lice is likely to have been back in the river for longer.

Hen Salmon

The adult female fish will retain more of this silver colour than the male, although being in fresh water will cause her scales to darken, and she will develop a tiny kype or bump on her lower jaw.

Fresh run Hen Salmon

A female adult salmon is known as a Hen, a male is known as a Cock.

Cock salmon

Once in breeding colours it’s easy to recognise a Cock salmon.  The two main features are the change in colour and of the lower jaw. A breeding male’s colouration is often described as a tartan pattern, and means the fish is patchy with different shades of oranges, silver, and red markings.  Overall the fish is brownish-orange, pinkish-red, or yellowish in colour.  There’s plenty of variation between individuals.  The lower jaw develops a prominent hook or “kype” which is used to fight rivals who threated its teritory.  It also makes eating almost impossible; adult salmon mostly die after mating.

Cock salmon with kype

The Cock salmon will also have an enlarged adipose fin.

Salmon vs Trout

Again, there’s occasional confusion between an adult salmon and a large adult brown trout.  The Salmon have a more streamlined shape, a concave tail with a thinner neck than the trout tail, far fewer (or no) black spots below the lateral line (about half way down the fish body), and its upper jaw tends not to reach any further back than the rear of the eye.  Obviously, wiht an adult cock salmon with kype and tartan pattern, the difference us clear and immediate.

Adult Brown trout Salmo trutta

One more stage in the life cycle of a salmon is that on the kelt (not illustrated).  Kelts are salmon which have spawned but still remain in the river.  They regain a more silvery colour but are noticably thin, with a distended vent and frequently have red “maggots” on their gills.

A hen salmon will use her tail to scrape a nest or “redd” in the pebbles and lay eggs which are fertilized by the male, cover them over, deposit more eggs on top, cover them, and so on.  In time these will hatch into tiny salmon fry and so the cycle begins again.

For more information, please check out the Cornwall Rivers website, or teh Atlantic Salmon Trust.  For more on this project, look at my blog on the Glanwye project.

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Who asks illustrators to work for free?

There are various times when I’m asked to work for free, or to donate paintings.  Sometimes these are completely valid.

Charities and local causes

I can choose to allow a charity to use of my illustrations, and not charge them.  I will happily donate paintings to raise funds for the local school.

Small businesses

Small businesses just starting out may ask for a reduction of rates, or to use a picture for free.  I can choose to agree or not.  In either case I don’t regard these approaches as cheeky.  (I let Ross on Wye’s Festival of the Hedgehog use the illustration below for free on publicity materials).

Design Companies making a pitch

Sometimes design companies will ask you to work for free.   They explain that that they’re pitching for a job, and if they get it then you’ll be given the contract and handsomely paid.  I don’t like this.  I would prefer to be paid up front for what I do.  It’s understandable though; the design companies are minions of larger corporations.   They don’t get paid for presenting their ideas, so nor do the illustrators they rely on.

An example of this is work I did in the summer for Jelly, an excellent production agency in London (see below).  An unpaid week’s work for an animation idea.  It came to nothing, but had it succeeded I would have been paid a few thousand and had steady work for a month or more.  It was a gamble, this time it didn’t pay off, but I did the work for free knowing there was a potential reward.

Large companies asking you to work for free: Just say no.

What makes me extremely angry, and what I find deeply insulting, is when large and successful multi-national companies approach you and ask to use your work for free.  This isn’t confined to the world of illustration.  Friends who work in journalism, music, fine art, and fashion have all been approached in this way.  All been infuriated by it.  These big and profitable companies finish their brazen requests with “there’s no budget for illustration, but we’ll credit you.  The publicity will be excellent for you.”  Well, let’s have a little look, shall we?

My response to: “We have no budget”

These large companies set their own budgets.  If there’s no money for illustration, then you should have budgeted for it.  It is your fault, and you should not be rewarded for bad planning by getting free usage of my artwork.

Being credited for illustration is the norm across most areas of the industry.  You get credited for paid work too.  Do not  act magnanimous by offering to credit me as the creator of my own art work.

My response to: “You’ll get great publicity”

“Publicity”.  This is  the one that annoys me most.  It’s as if these companies are dangling you an amazing and priceless opportunity.  They suggest it’s worth far more than hard cash.  Get over yourselves.  Publicity is great.  In all likelihood the trumpeted “publicity” here amounts to little more than your name printed very small somewhere.  And why on earth wouldn’t you pay for the work, and offer the “publicity” as a bonus?  I find it impossible to believe that you couldn’t afford an illustrator’s fees.

There’s a fabulous rant by a musician (Whitey) on this exact topic; his email to an executive asking for free usage of his music sums up my feelings precisely.

I view these approaches as flagrant under-valuing of my illustrations and career, and know many colleagues feel the same.  We spend years training to be illustrators, and it’s not exactly a high-paid industry.  I know we can choose whether or not to agree to these ludicrous requests.  However,  I feel it’s undermining the industry as a whole, and illustration in particular.  It makes me uneasy, and unhappy.

What I would say to these organisations, (and they are rife), is this, “if you value my work, pay for it.  If you’re not willing to pay for it, don’t insult me by expecting to use it for free”.

Rant over.

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I picked up two illustrations from my excellent framing workshop Fitting Frames  this week.  I also had a jigsaw of the Waterbugs and Dragonflies illustration made up.  The painting is destined for a house with small children in, so I’ve included that in the photo too.

Paintings that have been sold

I  sold a framed illustration of mixed wildflowers; which included hawthorn, sloe, and pyramidal orchid.

Another two of my illustrations, a salmon and a trout, raised a very decent amount at our local school Christmas fair (Hay on Wye Primary School), which was gratifying.

Ash Die-back

I decided a useful project would be to research and paint an illustration of diagnostic symptoms, to help people identify ash die-back.  According to the Woodland Trust, ash die back has been identified at more than 257 sites across the UK, and a local friend has just found the first case in Herefordshire.  What surprised me was how many different traces the disease leaves. Cankers appear, and there’s damage to the stems.  The crown withers.  Sprigs and leaves curl up and die (with a tell-tale black midrib along each leaf).   White fruiting bodies appear on leaf stipes and on blackened twigs in leaf litter. In all cases the fungus responsible is Hymenoscyphus pseudialbidus.  Internal damage to the wood leaves it greyish brown and mouldy.  I only have the thinning of the crown and a dying sapling left to paint, then the piece will be completed.

It’s a fascinating project, but also enormously upsetting; I’m very fond of ash trees with their hopeful upturned branches and beautiful black buds.  Along with many other people, I will be deeply saddened as the effect of this disease becomes more apparent across the British landscape.

I’ve also updated business contacts and done some more promotional work.   I hope to send out my Christmas mail-shot next week.

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