Bestiary Makeover!
Yes, yet another announcement, but I am now yet again restyling my Bestiary series, those little size comparisons of the animals I draw, mainly very dead and very gone. With these new mock-ups I’ve done on the aeroplane, I am now planning them to be themed as if they were "vintage" contemporary illustrations drawn by a time-travelling naturalist, basically a prehistoric Naturalist’s Library, and there will be a new name I’ve yet to think up too. In this one format, there is a good buffet of information implemented creatively thanks to the style. There isn’t just the illustrated PNG dinosaur in the foreground, but also a simple scene of its environment and some information, like in The Naturalist’s Library. It also puts less effort drawing the dinosaur, and I can still have it as a PNG without horrendous connecting lines. Sorry, no more size comparisons, they’re not often in the many wildlife illustrations I want to reference, and I didn’t like how I drew myself. These aren’t the only reasons why I’ve went for this new theme, my approach to palaeontology isn’t just like the study of specific catalogue-named bones in a university paper (important, but I prefer to present the fun natural part), but the adventurous childhood approach of the extinct wildlife themselves as if you were amusingly learning about and observing them simply in the flesh, and travelling back in time to a prehistoric safari to witness them, though they’re all dead now. This theme fits my approach.
I am also rethinking how I reconstruct my animals with speculation, ever since I was introduced to All Yesterdays. Fossils don’t often preserve their animals as complete, save that one little Psittacosaurus, who knows what’s outside the bones if animals today have all sorts of behaviours and displays we cannot tell from their withered corpses alone? I do feel that however, though I was not intending it, I might’ve made some of my animals look inconsistently on their way to Mardi Gras, especially that they’re very different and speculative in precise with unique bells and whistles and they can easily be inaccurate. My flamboyant Ceratosaurus is an example, though I am way less cautious with it than my Triceratops, which looks right out of The Nightmare Before Christmas and has a lot of speculative bells and whistles, and has keratinised spiky quills that I loved the idea of but could easily be lost in evolution after earlier ceratopsians like Psittacosaurus. I want my reconstructions to feel as natural and as consistent as a lion on the modern day plains, or pretty much every animal we know today. To explore that more, there isn’t just the ornate male Tyrannosaurus here, crowned with great little growths of horn. I tried out editing it into a "blander" female as well, similar to more conservative reconstructions but still with naturally consistent detail, as well as having a closed mouth that looks quite expectant. To me it evokes an eerily realistic and reptilian vibe, looking a lot like a Komodo dragon.
And yes, that is a volcano in the background, just for experimentation. I just love the classic addition of distant volcanoes in prehistoric scenes (Walking With Dinosaurs has a terrifying favourite, though its portrayal of the Late Cretaceous land as a poisoned ash field is very wrong), although their existence in Tyrannosaurus’s home is very speculative, though India did at least have the terrifying Deccan Traps which might’ve been a contributor to the Cretaceous extinction. Going to Teide National Park in Tenerife made me especially immersed in it. I just like these nice imposing backgrounds.
My Allosaurus won’t be complete soon, as I do have to materialise this style to its best from its mockup, since new illustrations like it will star within the format. Hope you all will enjoy them!
