Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Platypterygius longmani 1

The next challenge up at Art Evolved is an ichthyosaur. Well, here we go! I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening liveblogging this project. I hope -- perhaps in vain -- to have two finished art pieces by the end of the session.

One will be a simple graphic based on this sketch; the other will be a fully rendered piece. I've already done most of the work for the latter; all I have to do is adjust colors and render the beast.

And just for the record; this is not intended to be a rigorous reconstruction; rather, it's art derived from the fossil. For instance, the spine flexes up and down in this illustration, and I doubt ichthyosaurs did much of that. Oh, well, it's what my hand and eye did.

This was done in pencil on tracing vellum, then cleaned up in Photoshop.

See you soon...

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