·:[ Rusty Innards ]:·
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     My last post was a bit of an announcement for a special bird/dinosaur drawing zoo sketch group.  Here’s a bit of the oucome from that day; Flamingos, pigeons, and a Therizinosaur (loosely based around beipiaosaurus).  The Therizinosaurs were a *very* strange group of dinosaurs…  Feathered herbivores descended from carnivorous theropods, they looked (As Ryan Shutter put it..) like “Turkey Monsters.”  It’s with species like these, species that blur the line between birds and dinosaurs,  that you can really have fun and merge wildlife drawing and concepting.

    On a side-note, I prepared a handout for the Dinosaur drawing day.  While it was designed to be paired with the talk I gave, the breakdown I made of the theropod form and shapes still is helpful on it’s own.  If you’re interested in a printable version of the handout for your own personal use, click the thumbnail below.

A quick drawing done last night for the announcement of a talk and demo I’ll be doing for TheIllustrationBoard.com.  Swing on over to the boards for more info, and be sure to come to the talk if you have time.

Here’s a forgotten sketch from my book, done during a roadtrip to visit my folks.  Another dinosaur, this time a Tyrannosaur; I decided to play around a bit with it, giving it a fleshy comb and a dewlap.  I image the males sport the dewlaps and nose-combs, which flush red with blood during the mating season to attract females.  Extinct creatures are always a joy to draw, as you can go a bit wild with ideas like a chicken’s comb on a T. Rex. This is one of the reasons I find paleo-art so fun… It’s life-drawing injected with fantasy-esque creativeness.  It’s a perfect blend of wildlife art and fantasy concepting.

A fun little sketch of a Lambeosaurus, done from the life-sized sculpture at the San Diego Natural History Museum.  On a related note, there happened to be a Robert Bateman art show in the Museum’s gallery while I was there..Really awesome stuff, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to catch it.

Those who know me can verify that my fascination with dinosaurs did not wither away around the third grade, as that fascination has a tendency to do with children.  Thanks to illustrators like James Gurney and William Stout, my wide-eyed enthusiasm for the prehistoric only grew over time;  This page from my sketchbook is testament to that fact.  This is hopefully the first (since grade school, at least) of many forays into the world of paleo-art.