Therizinosaur Update

Look! Nothronychus! The only way I was able to make this animal look in any way reasonable, I took a few liberties with its design. First, it's got big legs. Why? Because when they were any slimmer, they ended up looking silly. Note also that he's got more sauropod-esque feet, what with those big dermal pads under the metatarsals. I've also given him a light covering of "quills" down the back. I imagine him flaring his quills to intimidate predators. If I have time today (I actually don't), I may draw Falcarius in a threat display.

Gonna color him later tonight, just in time for the Art Evolved show tomorrow!

In Preparation

I've missed out on some awesome Art Evolved shows over the last few months (understandably), so I'm getting back on ye olde bandwagon for the March therizinosaur-themed show. This is a draft of Therizinosaurus I whipped up today. A couple things worth mentioning:

1) Notice that it's got a plantigrade foot. Andrea Cau turned me on to an interesting paper (via his excellent post) that suggests, based on alleged therizinosaur footprints, that these big theropods had bear feet. It's certainly more plausible than the "knuckle-walking" strategy I suggested like two years ago on this humble blog. However, I do still endorse a chalicothere model, so this therizinosaur is comfortably sitting on his haunches.

2) If that center claw is three feet long, then the whole animal is between thirty and forty feet long. I've never been comfortable with uber-huge estimates for Therizinosaurus. The largest maniraptor known from good material s Gigantoraptor, and it's almost thirty feet long. What I've done to combat oversizing the animal is to shorten the neck and tail. If we're talking about an animal the size of Allosaurus, it can probably reach its leafy greens just fine without a sauropod-sized neck, thankyouverymuch.

3) Only the arms have feathers (right now), and even those may largely disappear. Giant animals with insulating feathers? Probably not. I may give it very sparse feathers along the back, flanks, and arms.

4) It will be to scale with the two other therizinosaurs that I'll be including, Falcarius and Nothronychus. I'll give you two guesses as to where I'm going with this...

Synapsid Show, and my EPIC FAIL

Another quick post. If you haven't already, check out the incredible Permian Synapsid art gallery over at the Art Evolved! blog. And while you're there, check out my self-loathing explaination of how I totally fucked this one up. I think you'll agree.

Gorgonopsids and Dicynodonts and Pelycosaurs, OH MY!

The newest art show at the Art Evolved! goes up today. Its theme: Permian synapsids, a wondefully diverse but, alas, poorly-known group of critters that deserve a whole lot more time in the spotlight. My own submission is painfully horrible and difficult to look at now. Forgive my feeble attempts at coloring things with Photoshop. The sketch had so much promise! I shall blog about my failings at a later date, but I eagerly await seeing what my talented colleagues came up with! Perhaps I shall throw together one of my "signature" pen & ink pieces tonight for inclusion...

The Einiosaurus Sequence

For all of you who've been to the new Art Evolved art show, my Einiosaurus growth sequence may already be familiar. Well in this humble post, I will delve into how such a drawing came to be. For the uninformed, here is the final product (it's actually not the final product, as I intend to significantly rework it):

Anyway, check that out. Things I want to do to it in the future: Put quotation marks around Brachyceratops and Monoclonius (don't know why I forgot that one!), give all the heads scales, eliminate the "grown-together" look of the epocciptals, and add rows of scutes going down the center of the parietal and the squamosal-parietal contact. Andrew Farke also suggested toning down the coalescence of the keratin on the face. He says the postorbital and nasal horns would have very separate origins, more like you see in traditional restorations. So that's a future project.

Anyway, the picture was always going to be a growth series, as I'd been reading a lot about centrosaurine ontogeny lately. The original plan was to have a big adult Einiosaurus defending a younger female and a baby animal against a marauding Daspletosaurus. But because I am who I am, I quickly found myself panicking against a looming March 1st deadline, so I scrapped the "scenic" approach and focused exclusively on the animal's noggins, which is where the biggest changes occurred anyway. I initially did inked sketches of all three animals...

Hideous little Brachyceratops there. I was initially forcing myself to get out of my habit of drawing animals in profile only. I could've reworked this little guy and keep the 3/4ths view, but I think the transition is more obvious in profile view. However, for my upcoming Ceratopsia project, I'm gonna have to get used to the 3/4ths view.

The Monoclonius was reworked from M. lowei to reflect differences in the nasal horn. In M. lowei, the horn is much smaller and recurved. It is, however, clearly a different animal than Centrosaurus apertus, which every other "Monoclonius" was reassigned to. Whatever M. lowei is, it must be a subadult of a "straight-back" frilled centrosaurine. Einiosaurus isn't a bad match, all things considered. I'm bothered by the recurved nasal horn, but, of course, centrosaurines go through more severe changes than that, and the postorbital horns of Triceratops went from stubs to recurved to straight to procurved duriung growth, to I guess anything's possible.

Aaaand here's the big bull's skull. This was the first piece of the puzzle, actually. Andrew Farke okayed it, suggesting only that I modify the shape of the pariatal-squamosal suture. He was also kind enough to send me a photo of an Einiosaurus squamosal so I could get a better idea of its shape.

And here is the first draft of the bull with skin on its face. It's much sketchier than the final draft, and the fleshy nostril is too far away from the nose. Andrew suggested I move it down and closer to the rostral bone to make it "more Wittmorian." Since this sketch was done more or less by tracing the skull (above), the parietal-squamosal contact is still incorrect.

And then you have the finished version (at the top), which was done by scanning all these pictures into Photoshop Elements and coloring them separately (copy base layer + multiply!) and then stitching them together in sequence. You'll notice I changed the Brachyceratops. I did that to make the sequence look smoother, so that all parts of the skull could be compared. I'm not actually done with the piece, either. Scott did a cool "scale" effect on his Pachyrhinosaurus that I'd like to implement here, and I'd like to put little scutes going down the center of the parietal and the parietal/squamosal contact. Finally, I need to tone down the intergration between the epoccipitals and between the nasal and postorbital horns. Aaaand maybe add some background color. And some explanatory text, including throwing some quotation marks around "Brachyceratops" and "Monoclonius."

Art Evolved!

The wait is over. A few months ago, Traumador emailed me and offered a spot on the staff of a new paleo-blog called Art Evolved. His goal (I think) was to build a site where paleoartists from around the web could gather and show off their art and enthusiasm for their subject matter. I leapt at the opportunity. Well, after about four months, the site is now LIVE, and the first art show has been posted! More entries may leak in during the coming days, so check back now and again. I'm very excited about this project--the first show concerns ceratopsians (thus, my recent obsession with them), and it's really fantastic, spared no expense.

So head on over to Art Evolved: Life's Time Capsule and take in the horned dinosaurs!

An Art Show Involving Horns and Frills

Tomorrow, I will point you all in the direction of a brand-spanking new art show--one that's totally online, and features several prominant web paleoartists! Think of it as a paleoart answer to SV-POW...it's very exciting, and I wish I could give you the link right now, but I haven't even submitted my final draft to Traumador yet. Oh! I've given too much away! Mark your calendars, dear readers, for tomorrow, March 1st, when horns, beaks, and frills will get their artistic due!

The Virtual Art Show Part 5: Effigia okeeffeae

From a distance, you would think that Effigia was a small dinosaur. In fact, although its family is from the Late Triassic, previously-named relatives have been considered to be very early representatives of the ostrich-mimic dinosaurs! It wasn't until Effigia was described in 2006 that the true nature of the family became clear. These were poposaurs, a group more closely allied to animals like Arizonasaurus than to dinosaurs. Aside from its crocodilian ankle structure and vertebrae, though, Effigia was just as "dinosaurian" (if not more so) than the theropods that shared its habitat. Aside from being fully bipedal, Effigia had a toothless beak, booted pubis, long, flexible neck, and lacked any kind of bony armor. What's more, Effigia's family may have predated the rise of dinosaurs. This suggests that dinosaurs may have been Effigia-mimics rather than the reverse.

Effigia and its cousins are wonderful examples of convergence, where two unrelated animals develop the same adaptations and look superficially similar. More familiar examples might be the resemblence betwee dolphins and ichthyosaurs, ore saber-toothed cats and saber-toothed marsupial predators. In all examples, similar body types evolved multiple times in wildly disparate synapsid groups, from pre-mammalian pelycosaurs and gorgonopsids to herbivorous brontotheres, machairodont cats, and even a few extinct and living deer!

Artist Notes

I hate this picture. I hate it so much. This was the last picture I tackled, and honestly, I was done with the show. The colors are terrible. Have you ever seen a neon-green crocodilian? Neither have I. The belly is too light, and I'm not sure what the f*ck I was doing with the eyeball. Then I gave it an orange beak. I was clearly under the influence of some covert drug. I actually knew after getting the "bottom layer" (neon green) down that it was a mistake, so I spent the rest of the time trying to cover it up with dark green scales. Didn't work, and this is probably the one piece I will burn when the show comes down in two days. Besides the cramp-inducing color scheme, the neck could use some of those tail vertebrae. In general, the proportions are alright, but the neck is too short and the tail's too long.

Fun Facts

Effigia is one of the only taxa to survive multiple reworkings of the taxa list for the show. It's my favorite example of convergence because, in some ways, it's more dinosaurian than the dinosaurs it shared its habitat with. My intention the whole time was to make its body outline look like an early dinosaur, but keep some of the traits that make it a crurotarsian, namely large scutes 'n' scales. There's a loss of osteoderms in Effigia, but that doesn't mean its skin was completely naked. Crocs have plenty of non-bony scutes, so why not Effigia?

In closing, I really hate this picture. As Darwin as my witness, I swear to you, the Cetacea show will be far superior.

The Virtual Art Show Hiatus

Sorry, folks, but until Scott and I get back from SVP, I won't be able to post any more pictures from the show, and indeed there is one more: Effigia, but we need to take its picture (digitally). This was going to be accomplished on Saturday, but we both overslept and decided to leave it for our return. Scott left that day, and I leave tomorrow night.

Also, a few people have asked me if we're going to do prints. The short answer is: Probably. They will most likely be on foamcore, and I'm hoping to sell them for $20 apiece, which would cover copy costs on our behalf and give us a little bit of profit. It'll all be worked out when we return, and digital pictures are taken of all the pieces. Apart from the foamcore, buyers will also get the text and Venn phylogeny for that particular animal.

The Virtual Art Show: Part 4

Arizonasaurus babbitti

Although Arizonasaurus has been known since 1947, a clear picture of the beast was not provided until 2002, when a nearly complete skeleton was unearthed in—you guess it—Arizona. The new material revealed a spectacular dorsal sail formed by the neural spines of the vertebrae, a strangely persistent feature throughout tetrapod evolution. The skull is large and filled with vicious, recurved teeth. Arizonasaurus would have been a formidable predator. Sails have appeared in virtually every major group of tetrapods, including amphibians, pre-mammalian synapsids, several dinosaur groups, and even some modern chameleons!

The function of dorsal sails remains a mystery. It was once thought that, among cold-blooded animals like Dimetrodon, the sail helped to gather heat. And indeed, this may be true. But in larger, potentially endothermic animals, the sails may have been used primarily as display devices, almost like living billboards advertising an animal's presence. If the solar panel function is the primary one, though, one would expect to see more cold-blooded animals with sails. But while sails occur independently among several tetrapod lineages, they are quite rare overall.

Artist Notes

Arizonasaurus made it into the show more by sloth than anything else. In fact, you may recognize it from a previous post. We threw this sailbacked poposaur in because, most importantly, the work was already done, and second, we felt we needed another piece. Looking back, we probably didn't, but the addition of a sail-backed member of the Crurotari certainly brought some flash to the show. Arizonasaurus has the distinction of being the single piece resulting from a collaboration between Scott and I. A loooong time ago, back in Version 1.0 of this blog (now defunct and deleted--thanks, Google!), I did a fairly lengthy post about crurotarsians, and the centerpiece for that post was the inked drawing of Arizonasaurus, shown below. That picture, however, failed to really "pop," so I begged Scott to color it for me using his latent psychic powers and knowledge of com-poo-tors. He did a wonderful job.

Fun Facts

Arizonasaurus' sail is strange to me. It doesn't really rise until it gets past the shoulderblades, giving it a somewhat abbreviated appearance. This is in contrast to animals like Dimetrodon and Ouranosaurus, who have sails that begin at or cranially to the scapulae. Arizonasaurus also has unusually flared neural spines, meaning that there wasn't a whole lot of skin between the vertebrae of the sail. Again, this is unlike Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus, who had spike-like neural spines. Many other sailbacked tetrapods had flared neural spines though, including Platyhystrix (an amphibian) and Spinosaurus. One wonders if there was a functional difference between these constructions, or just different ways of building the same structure?

For more Virtual Art Show fun, click the "Virtual Art Show" tag, because I'm too lazy to link to all the individual entries. Scott has several of his own pieces up at Coherent Lighthouse, too, so be sure to check those out! And Raven--all you've gotta do is Tupandactylus! Get on it!

The Virtual Art Show: Part 3

The Dinosauria

The Dinosauria is one of the most successful groups of tetrapods that ever existed. The first dinosaurs appeared during the Triassic period, some 250 million years ago, but did not rise to dominance until 20 million years later, in the Early Jurassic, after a minor extinction event wiped out the competition. With their larger archosaurian contemporaries out of the way, dinosaurs proceeded to explode in diversity. There were three main branches of the Dinosauria: Ornithischia, a group which included the armored, duckbilled, and horned forms; Sauropodmorpha, the giant long-necked animals; and Theropoda, the (mostly) carnivorous dinosaurs.

Individual dinosaur groups experienced high turnover rates until the Cretaceous period, when they diversified again, perhaps due to the appearances of early grasses and flowering plants. One group of theropods, the Maniraptora, gave rise to birds, the only dinosaur group to survive into modern times. At the end of the Late Cretaceous, 65 million years ago, a comet the size of Mt. Everest smashed into the Gulf of Mexico and blanketed the world in darkness and ash. Virtually all of the dinosaurs, as well as other large-bodied tetrapods (including marine reptiles) were annihilated. Even the prevailing group of birds, the Enantiornithines, were drowned out. Another, smaller family of birds, the Neornithines, somehow survived the fallout and diversified during the Cenozoic to include all living forms.

Artist Notes

I'm only responsible for the Allosaurus in this picture. Scott did the Brachiosaurus and Raven drew both the Triceratops and Corvus. Both of Raven's pictures are absolutely stunning. Her ornithischian has a certain William Stout quality to it, which is funny considering she doesn't know who William Stout is. Compared to the competition, I'm pretty unhappy with my contribution. It looks like a textbook drawing--the other pictures look like real animals. This is something I have to work on: giving my animals some life and personality. And context, as Scott would say. I'm also sad that my animal has pads on his left hand, but lacks pads on his right hand. I chalk it up to pathology or inattention to detail, take your pick!

Fun Facts

Why these four animals? We wanted to include a bird, an ornithischian, and a theropod. I chose Allosaurus and Triceratops because they were considered the anchor taxa before the dinosaur-bird connection was established. We were going to do a pigeon (or a dove, whatever the current saurischian anchor is), but went for the raven because Alaskans love their ravens. Also, Raven loves ravens (wonder why?). Originally, Scott was going to do the Triceratops, but we both thought that sauropods needed to be represented. The connection between sauropods and theropods isn't especially obvious to the common man, so we threw Brachiosaurus in there, too.

The Virtual Art Show: Part 2

Pterosauria

Pterosauria was the first vertebrate group to develop true flapping flight. Their origins are murky, because the oldest pterosaur fossils are already capable fliers! However, the fact that basal pterosaurs have both antorbital and mandibular fenestrae in their skulls indicate their archosaurian roots. Earlier pterosaurs, like Dimorphodon macronyx, had long, stiffened tails with bony rudders. Their wings were short, and the main wing surface ran from the end of the elongated fourth finger to the ankles. Furthermore, a hindlimb patagium ran between the elongated pinkie toes. This meant that early pterosaurs were clumsy on land, and may have spent all their time in the trees or on the wing.

Another group of pterosaurs, the Pterodactyloidea, arose during the Late Jurassic. They lost the long tails of their ancestors, elongated their wings, increased their walking abilities, and developed a menagerie of strange and wonderful headcrests. Two of the spectacular must have been Tupandactylus and Nyctosaurus. Pterodactyloids also diversified to tackle a wide range of foods and environments. Some, like Nyctosaurus, soared over the ocean, diving for fish like an albatross. Tupandactylus probably walked along the plains looking to scavenge or capture small vertebrates like an African hornbill. There was even a filter-feeding pterosaur from Argentina called Pterodaustro!

Artist Notes

Regular readers might remember that Nyctosaurus took an especially long time. Once again I must thank all my readers who commented and offered me tips and critiques on my drafts. Anyway, the final painting took its coloration from the Black Oystercatcher, a really beautiful Arctic seabird. Since Nyctosaurus is thought to have roosted around the Western Interior Seaway, I thought seabird colors would be fitting. However, gulls generally have pretty boring colors (although at one point I was considering the Black-Headed Gull) so I went with something more eye-catching. The toughest part was getting the crest to fit on the canvas--I was forced to shop off a few inches of the back-pointing portion to make it fit. The picture is almost life-size!

The Dimorphodon didn't require nearly as much work. Remember this awful attempt? It quickly evolved into a final draft which I turned into a transparancy and colored like a puffin. Why a puffin? Because ever since I was little, I'd thought that Dimorphodon's big ol' noggin looked puffin-esque. Ironically, it probably didn't live like a puffin. Puffins eat fish, Dimorphodon ate bugs and small terrestrial (and arboreal) vertebrates. Puffins roost on searocks and spend most of their time in the water, while Dimorphodon probably lived inland and, according to Mark Witton, may not have been the best flier. But I really like the color scheme, especially on the snout.

Another note: I wanted to try a range of media for the show. Dimorphodon was going to be on a piece of illustrator board and done up with illustrator markers. Unfortunately, illustrator board sucks, and flattened the look of my markers. I also bought cheap-ass markers because the good stuff (Prismacolor) was like $85. Anyway, the piece looked flat and faded, and I didn't like it at all, so I threw it out and started on canvas. I'm far happier with the canvas version!

Fun Facts

I didn't want to include Pterosauria in the show originally, because I wasn't convinced that the group should be included in the Archosauria! In fact, my position on their phylogenetic affinities is still tenuous, and rests solely on the skull features of Dimorphodon, who has both antorbiteal and mandibular fenestrae. Still, Euparkeria has both, too, and is not considered an archosaur proper. Nobody's done a good job of explaining to me why the group is currently placed close to, or within, the Ornithodira. I think Benton (I forget the year) did a good job of explaining why hindlimb features "shared" between ornithodirans and pterosaurs are convergences, and not the result of common ancestry.

Note: Once again, this format is FAIL.

Other posts in the Virtual Art Show:

Simosuchus

Stomatosuchus

The Virtual Art Show, Part One

Simosuchus clarki

"Clark's pug-nosed crocodile" is known from a single well-preserved skull from Madagascar. As a notosuchid, Simosuchus belongs to a group of small-to-medium sized crocodilians that reached the zenith of their diversity during the Late Cretaceous. The group ran the gamut of feeding ecologies. Simosuchus itself was probably an herbivore, given its leaf-shaped teeth and squared-off snout. It also would have been barely a meter long. Simosuchus would have been on the lookout for the dinosaurs it shared its habitat with. While one may think that such a small animal would be easy pickings for a carnivore, Simosuchus was probably adorned with the armor plating of its more modern relatives to protect it from harm.

Artist Notes

Simosuchus was one of the easier animals to restore for the show. Early on, I decided not to try and guess what kind of body it had, because the creature is only known from a single skull. So I did a headshot, and used a combination of crocodilian armor scutes and wonder gecko coloration for the general look. The actual painting took a long time, though, longer than any of the other pieces (except Effigia), because it was my second piece and I'd never painted before. Scott taught me how to do a "wash" by incorporating water into the acrylic paint. I used a wash for the lower jaw, although it seems pretty unsuccessful now. My pet wonder gecko, Big Boss, provided the splotch pattern. After coloring in the neck scutes, I decided they looked too flat, so I used my smallest brush and painted a white "apex" across each one. I think it looks nice. I don't especially care for the ventral scales, but by that point I was ready to move onto the next animal.

Fun Facts

Scott and I couldn't decide whether to do Simosuchus, Anatosuchus, or both. At one point, we were going to adorn each text board with sketches of related animals. I really wanted to get Chimaerasuchus in there, too, but I couldn't find its description. We did end up using a Simosuchus skull drawing I threw together one night. In the skull drawing, I emphasized Simosuchus' large palpebral bone, something that is not very apparant in the painting because of the spot pattern.

Note: The addition of more than one picture, plus both centered AND left-aligned text means that this post's format will be FAIL. It's not ugly on purpose--it's ugly because of eBlogger and my inability to read HTML fluently.