30-Day Dinosaur Challenge: Favorite Theropod!

Oh, for heaven’s sake, could there be an easier answer for me?

I have several art challenges going at once…when I feel like doing one, I pick up that sketchbook, and I may not go back to it for a few days. I go at my own pace.

(Here is a quick lesson on theropods.)

The general public not being total dinosaur nerds like me,I suppose most of the general public learned what a carnotaurus was once the Disney movie Dinosaur came out. I am happy to say I was made aware of it much earlier, back in the early 90’s, when I was in college. I found a bookstore downtown at my school that had some discounted book out front and found this great kid’s book called A Gallery of Dinosaurs and Other Early Reptiles, by David Peters. It is still one of my favorite dino books because every dinosaur or other reptile in it is pictured in a group of its peers, to scale. And with kids included so you can see, if you’re a kid, how you compare with the giants..or the shrimps! Anyway, this was my first look at Carnotaurus.

 

Holy smokes, what a horror of a face.

 

I instantly loved it.

Once Upon a Challenge, Days 1–4

I love looking for month-long art challenges online, and filling up new sketchbooks with them. Drawing every day has immensely improved my drawing within the past year; however, with so much drawing going on I had to slim down the products I draw in.

I am a blank book and notebook hoarder. I love, love, love blank sketchbooks, notebooks and journals, and I know I am not alone as I have found dozens of websites of people with similar afflictions. I have a lot of small hardback sketchbooks which I thought were going to be perfect for my art challenges, and I may still use them, but…saving them afterward is the hard part. I also archive everything, and all those hardback sketchbooks take up a lot of real estate on the bookshelves after a while. It was a difficult switch, one I took kicking and screaming because I loooove looking at my shelves and seeing actual books I filled up, but in the end I have switched mostly to booklets. The main ones I use are Fabriano(made in Italy) notebooks. They are slim and staple-bound, with forty pages–just the right size for a month-long challenge without a lot of pages left over. The paper in them is acid-free and a nice shade of ivory, and the binding, even if stapled, seems very well put together. A very nice brand of notebook to be so inexpensive.

 

Medieval Ridiculousness: Walking Fish!

This is a new feature I have been DYING to do…draw my versions of the hilarious(and often vulgar) creatures found in medieval manuscripts: Medieval Ridiculousness!

642 Things to Draw: Empire State Building!

Everything’s all a-glitter on tonight’s 642!

Oh, and a Tiffany lamp!

Lefty Drawing: The Nack!

Tonight’s Lefty Drawing is a Nack, the Scandinavian counterpart of the Scottish Kelpie. Essentially these river horses come ashore as beautiful saddle horses and wait for a rider to climb onto their backs. Once a human climbs aboard, they race back to the water, and their hides become powerfully adhesive so that the rider cannot break loose. The water horse dives into the river and drowns and devours its victim.