Monday, December 2, 2024
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Friday, November 8, 2024
More sketching at the Idaho Museum of Natural History. I've sketched their Suskityrannus mount before, but I wanted to do a head shot.
I'm aware that a lot of this museum sketching is really samey, and I apologize, but I have a certain repertoire of portable media that I've been working with, and often I only have a half hour or so to spend at the museum, so more complex illustrations, or anything involving color, are usually out of the question. At any rate, these are definitely just practice doodles. Doodle paleoart is better than no paleoart, right? Hypothetically?
For clarification, Suskityrannus has only been found in New Mexico; however, there are fragments of a very similar tyrannosauroid found in the Wayan Formation of eastern Idaho, so the IMNH has a suski mount to show what the Wayan's critter probably resembled (although it is in all likelihood a different, new species).
Also just trying out dinosaurs with eyelashes. I'm sure at least some groups had them.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Popped on over to the Idaho Museum of Natural History and thought I'd change it up a bit and attempt a mammal! They have two great mounts of Smilodon fatalis, a.k.a. the saber-toothed precious pumpkin.
I get really tired of paleoart that depicts felids as soulless killing machines and wanted to draw a Smilodon looking rather approachable. If my cat and I can be besties, why not? :) (If Smilodon was anything like modern cats, it would warm up to you real quick if it learned you were a source of free food and belly rubs.)
I don't draw prehistoric mammals as often as other animal groups, especially Pleistocene mammals, because they're not very far removed from modern fauna, so I get more worried about how closely I can get them to resemble their extant cousins, and we know perfectly well what those look like. With stuff like dinosaurs or Cambrian stem-arthropods, I feel like I have a bit more wiggle room.
I think that's part of why I find paleoart so fun, because there's actually a good deal of creature design involved; rather than drafting illustrations of something you can get photographic (or in-person) reference for, with paleoart you're given a skeleton or a carapace and you get to use your (scientifically-informed) imagination to reconstruct the rest of the animal.
Friday, October 18, 2024
More sketching at the Idaho Museum of Natural History! They asked me if I would draw their new Oryctodromeus mount, which has updated physiology based on new research. Most noticeable are the shorter legs and much longer tail, but it also seems to have a proportionately larger head. You can see the difference between this and previous drawings based on the older interpretation.
I'm super excited to announce that the revised edition of Pixeldust is now live on the Kindle store (and in paperback)!
I went into detail about why I decided to do a revision, and what exactly I revised, in this blog post. I really feel that all the issues with the original are fixed now, and it's something that both my current editor and I are satisfied with.
If you haven't read Pixeldust yet, please give it a spin! My editor loved it and she's not even a geeky gamer like yours truly!