Salaric

I have been making a giant papier mache coral as a piece of textural science art for the Exhibition In Braille which will be on this weekend (Sat 24th September 2011). The idea is that it represents the tree of life and at the end of each zooid or polyp tube is an organism made of different things such as wood, polymer clay, textiles, metal, stone and so on. There is a series of pictures in relief around the base that cannot really be seen but must be felt – these represent the scientific theories of Life’s origin and subsequent evolution. There is also a molecular sand made up of beads which will fit in the pockets built into the sand part of the sculpture and a series of poems which will be played along with it for people to listen too whilst feeling the piece.

This is my drawing for the March Time Capsule for Art Evolved on the heavy set large meat eating birds known as the Terror Birds. I chose Kelenken which is from about 15 million years ago and is one of the largest found so far. I got the general shape from looking at pictures of the skelentons – the feet I am not happy with but the over all bird I am 🙂

I sat down to take part in the next Time Capsule for Art Evolved – an on line paleo-art community (ie people who draw dinosaurs etc) – the next capsule is basically elephants, so mammoths and mastodons etc… I sat down to draw one but with christmas music and decorations around I found that I couldn’t get rid of a specific image… a mammoth in a Santa’s hat.

So I drew her! Ever Hopeful Helgar may just get her Christmas wish is the tag line. Anyway I suppose I should get one with drawing a non-christmas one 🙂 The drawing was done by sketching an outline in pencil and then inking it in using Stabilo fine liners. I have quiet a few coulors now – though still not quiet enough!

Anyway Happy Christmas 🙂

Well… erm… I sort of tidied up the house and have sort of erm… misplaced my cable for uploading photographs to the laptop :/

I have taken step by step photos of the process so far but can’t show you the results because I am a scatter brained mousse :/

But basically I drew a giant land sloth as that is the type of life style Therizinosaurs had, I then sketched the shape of the skeleton and fleshed it out with the features I thought it should have from what I’d read.

So sorry about the photo issue but I will have them up and with you a.s.a.p!

I decided that the description of Therizinosaurs mouths and nose sounded similar to camels and I think this would go with the browsing behaviour they are thought to have had.

So I decided to draw the giant prehistoric camel from the kids how to draw book. I did the pencil construction lines and then inked in – I’m not actually happy with it but as it is only to get an idea of one part of the dino I want to draw I’m not going to re-do it and to be fair I did have a 4 yr old jumping on me :/

I chose to draw an archaeopteryx next as it has feathers on it would appear that Therizinosaurs had feathers! Again the outline came from the kids how to draw dinosaurs book. I did a pencil construction using all the simple geometric shapes, then inked in an outline discovering feathers are not a strong point! Then I filled it in with a downy fluff to see what it would look like!

I picked this dinosaur to draw from the How To Draw Dinosaurs book because was the closest in there to Therizinosaurs – obviously the rib cage flares out on Therizinosaurs and stuff like that but it is somewhere to start!

Plus I’ve drawn the grand total of two dinosaurs before this both from the book! I initially bought it for my brother!

Anyway I used the construction lines in the book – got the head circle in the wrong place initially and everything and then inked in the outline. I bogged the tail and so put ornamentation on to hide it and the fact the head had gone wonky! I have no idea what sort of skin/feather/downy fur thesse creatures might have had but I like the patterning and little frill I’ve given my Struthiomimus!

I’m using two different sizes of sketch book for this project – the large one is A4 and were I’ll do the later sketches the smaller A5 is were I want to do sketches of animals I think will help me construct the Therizinosaur.

Anyway I flicked through the books and have decided which animals too sketch and so shall begin and stop procastinating 🙂

Well I decided to go and hunt out some books that I thought would help me draw the Therizinosaurs, these are Vertebrate Palaeontology (Michael J. Benton), an ancient book called Fossil Amphibians and Reptiles (W. E. Swinton), Draw 50 Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals (Lee J. Ames), and Animal Anatomy for Artists (Elliot Goldfinger).

I like starting projects off by doing a simple version of it hence the kids how to draw book – however I was very sad to find that damp has come through my bedroom wall and damaged the book quiet badly but I am also lucky that it only got this book :/ I of course bought the book when I was at the Natural History Museum!

Anyway – I am now going to spend the next little while scouring these books and looking at the pictures before I even start to draw!

I have also finally found a picture of a skull and it’s from the Bristol University website which cheered me up. Purely because Bristols in easy getting to distance and not in America :/ Silly I know.

I haven’t blogged on here for a while but do not fear this has been due to being too productive rather than being unproductive and I shall go and fill in the archive when I get a moment!

Also I know the posts normally arrive on a Sunday but I have found this excellent artist collective called ART Evolved and I even managed to submit something to their last time capsule!

I am now taking part in ‘live-blogging’ the process of producing my piece for the next time capsule and as I have only a week to get this thing drawn I can taste the pressure. The challenge is to create a piece of work based on the therizinosaur dinosaurs and as the Royal School of Mines changed their teaching policy for the last year of my degree I never got to do vertebrate palaeontology – something I was deeply disappointed about (I even tried to change to the four year course because of it but it was too late) – anyway this means that I hadn’t even heard of these creatures!

It seems odd to me now as dinosaurs were on of the reasons I’d gone off to do geology in the first place! And My four year old has just done dinosaurs at school. Of course being me I probably have heard of them and have just forgotten!

My first port of call was to look in the vertebrate palaeontology book I have (I bought the text book before I found out they’d fiddled with the course and used to read it in Hyde Park when bored – yes I know but I am a geek). This had barely a page and only one scematic of a skeleton and a bit of history. Not really enough to go on.

I did some internet research last night and felt abit over whelmed by how I was going to construct this creature that seems to have kept shifting it’s place in the world of Palaeo. I sort of like to have a premise for my drawings, i.e. creating a world or a message or during my degree diagrams – I loved doing diagrams 🙂

But I didn’t really want to paint a landscape for this creature – I wanted to do something a bit more akin to a diagram but not! (yeah I know probably not making much sense here!)

I was also pondering which one of the ‘possible’ therizinosaur dinosaurs depictions should I go for?

Then an idea occured to me – why not do a sort of time line of the evolution of the concept of these dinos? Of course this seems like a huge task and I probably will not get that finished for the deadline for the time capsule but I should think that in working towards it I will produce something I can submit 🙂

I am actually very excited about this as I love fusing science and art 🙂