This is Pterygotus buffaloensis. They found parts of one this year that suggest the specimen in question was about nine feet long. That's too damn big for an arthropod -- and that's just the biggest fossil they've found. God only knows what the real monsters were like. I regret the fact that long after I completed this I found a photograph of the fossilized claws of one specimen look much cooler than the ones I drew -- they were just coated with nice grabby spikes. And thanks to my crappy file management I don't have a version I can correct. Ah me and oh my.Well, I had my first session in the print lab at school last Wednesday morning and this was the first large-scale print of my work. The print is twenty inches by a bit over twenty-one inches and I've got to say that seeing it was a real moment for me.
The image was rendered using a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop. After making the initial sketch I drew the shapes and laid down a basic field of color in Illustrator, then rendered them fully in Photoshop.
This is a bit of a dry run for one of the art shows that I'm developing -- or rather, now that I've gotten a tiny bit of information on art shows, two shows.
Both shows are going to be based on the idea of producing life-size images of extinct animals for display in a gallery environment. The first show will feature orthogonal images -- either side or back views -- of animals that are small enough to be shown in full on a print that I can fit into my storage drawer in the lab. The sizes of these prints will vary in order to accomodate the size of the animal in a pleasant composition. Right now I'm planning on doing the rendering entirely in Illustrator -- I want to own that program the way I own Photoshop.
The next show will feature parts of larger animals that I'll fit into a standard size, probably somewhere around two by three feet. Again, they'll be rendered at life size. We might see the feet of a big theropod or sauropod, the head of a hadrosaur, a section of a Dimetrodon's sail, etc, etc.
Of course this isn't the first thing I'm going to be working on so far as art shows go -- further information tomorrow.
