I’ve had a chronic tooth ache for the last two weeks, a bone spur on my heel that keeps me from running, though I can now walk, and I haven’t done a speed paint in ages. This isn’t one either, as it took 2 hours and 44 minutes. It didn’t change my mood much, but it did reflect it. Michael Maisch is a passionate paleontologist who – as I discovered on my last trip to southern Germany – is out of a job. In a country that spends 163 billion Euros a year on subventions. And bails out banks.
Hope it’s not true. I had no photos of Michael to go on, just a sketch that I made during a wonderful talk he gave at the museum in Stuttgart. So – it likely misses the resemblance, but I remember this pose of his – and his passion.

I’d wanted to do some variations but my time schedule and computer both didn’t think much of that idea. So… here it is. Only – I’m not telling you what species are represented here. I want you to tell me, so I can see if I came close or not. Even if its only a speed paint, I figure I should be able to get a likeness down. Make your educated guesses in the comments section.

pathetically little, I know. Client called up.

Some sauropodii exhibiting a front sweep kick.  Let me know if you can tell the species I’m trying for. Celebrity likeness, so to speak.  I’m going to spend a few speed paints with this motiv… I figure Mike Taylor’s morbid fantasies need some cathartic appeasement.

Tried for a more dramatic view of this terror bird for the terror bird gallery at art evolved. Went about an hour. Fought tooth and nail with misbehaving brushes. This week I re-boot my digital life once more.

More great titles for this one than you can shake a fist at. Inspired by the great, late post at Andrea Cau’s Theropoda. how can you resist the googlation Paleoart Why Is Not?

Thanks to Andrea Cau for continuous inspiration and the others at artEvolved for their paints.

3 hours today, plus the half-hour yesterday. This approaches what I consider professional, and would form the basis for a really cool 3D sculpt if the level-of-detail should get pushed much further. coolest of all, Darren Tanke himself has asked to use it for his profile. Still not confident whether I’ve got the likeness or not. Whatcha think?

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Today’s paint in honor of Dave Hone’s Archosaur Musings… although the post referred to is by Darren Tanke. Great stuff… and funny honoring such a fastidious and on-going labor with with a 30 minute speedpaint.

Only 15 minutes today, my fascination for nostril soft tissues continues.

Based (roughly, very roughly) on a true event.

Yesterday’s paint (honest). First in a week. I’m slacking. This one is in honor of Darren Naish’s wonderful blog, among other things, about whales.

Today’s paint is part of a community challenge in honor of AskAbiologist… check out the others.

Yay! After every spare moment of my time over the course of a full week, I can now whip out a 30 minute 3D color Kentrosaurus. Laugh or cry? Good thing I didn’t have THAT much spare time.

A 3D revisit of the plateo-bovine debate. I did some sloppy booleans of volumes under Heinrich’s supervision. Blue is the volume of the Plateosaur only, green the cow. Shared space is deleted. Heinrich can calculate the volume with his software, I’ll let him present that. We’re both fairly certain that this cow is really, really fat.

Speed yes, paint no. Even though its a photo, this took quite some time to get focus and tonal ranges into gear. A mild reminder that I have more to work on than drawing this year, and that cycads are freaky cool plants. After a dormant period so long we were beginning to suspect we’d bought some elaborate plastic decor, ours suddenly decided to shoot up a new crown. Those insides are succulent tender bits, outside are like metal slabs. Makes me wonder if Steg had neck armor as dinner attire more than as defense.

Darren Naish’s post makes up today’s paint subject. Head on over, unfortunately, my paint doesn’t do it justice.

Going back to school so to speak, working off of photos of a green iguana. Those temporal fenestra freak me out. How can muscle fill that up? Where exactly does it attach? I’ll have to work up to a musculature drawing… but for now the bones. The first image is more or less a trace, the skeletal is then drawn to fit that pose. There are gaps in my knowledge in filling out what isn’t in those two skull views, complicated by the different growths stages of the skull specimens.

Interesting stuff about the eyes and the nostrils, and of course that hyoid / dewlap. I’ll have to pester my friendly neighborhood scientist again.

I think I’ll start a series about getting Heinrich’s goat. It’s not hard, really… just put a mammalian tail on a Kentrosaur, or get all touchy-feely about your cow data.

After a few days failing to get a daily something out, I post a 3D tree fern. woot.

Can’t say I like any of these. Need to play more.