speedpaint; Plateosaurus bust

Took my varanus approach and did a speedpaint (app. 45 minutes) of a Plateosaurus skull (largely a tracing from a still from the Loewentor video) and subsequent paintover. Some of my thoughts while doodling:
- dorsal scutes; seems of later sauropods had large, triangular scutes down their spine, the prosauropods would likely have them too.
- lips; the ridge and pinhole artifices (man, my vocabulary is rock solid!) indicate soft tissue. I went for lizard-like lips here… no muscular attachments, no closing in cheeks. I suspect that they had very capable tongue musculature which wolfed in vegetation… not happy with my solution yet. In contrast, the Kentrosaurus will have no lips, and more of a lower chin shovel to keep the vegetation from spilling out
- throat tissues; I think there could well have been impressive display mechanisms about the throat, like Brian Engh‘s but differently shaped. Not inflatable either, but Anole-like or possibly diverted from the beefy tongue
- nostril; I’ll have to pursue the bulging chamber more. It hardly comes across in this sketch. There is an edged depression that looks like the monitor lizard’s, and I like the idea of a rigid, chamber there with the nostril opening itself more forward. No soft baloony stuff though. That seems suspiciously like a strangulation bag for a beast that would suck in a respectable volume of air every few minutes
- only alluding to skin structure and coloration. No real exploration here yet.
That’s it. Off to the races.
12/09/2010
Wow!
Just wow!
Good call on the lips; Kentro should be similar, btw.
12/10/2010
Sorry for my lack of engagement lately. Been enjoying your recently upsurge in post, but haven’t had the time to proper comment (which hopefully tells you how freaking busy).
Nice reconstruction. Is this for a paper the good Doctor is writing or for museum use?
12/10/2010
Hi Craig, good to hear from ya!
this is just a warm-up. Thinking with fingers, so to speak. I hope to get a true illustration out this month (the Kentrosaurus), despite all my other commitments. We’ll see how I do.
Heinrich:
Thanks! I’ll have to ask you about those Kentrosaurus lips, though. Were they different than Stegosaurs? I’d previously been aligned with this:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=de&id=qeRM16ndBx4C&dq=the+beaked+jaws+of+stegosaurs+and+their+implications+for+other+ornithischians&q=Stegosaurus#v=snippet&q=Stegosaurus&f=false