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Birds have been on my mind a lot lately.
Even before I heard paleontologists calling them “avian dinosaurs,” I had a hunch that birds were linked somehow to dinosaurs. The fine-grained fossils that have been pouring out of the Liaoning province in China show clear evidence of well-developed feathers.
When it came to illustrating small two-legged dinosaurs, all my old painter’s tricks for rendering scaly skin were not going to cut it anymore. My old paintings of Oviraptors look naked now.
I realized I would have to learn to draw birds. I would have to watch them like hawks to see how they behave. I hung out at zoos, pet shops, county fairs, and chicken coops.
Did dinosaurs have a preening ritual in a definite sequence as birds do? Did they have a
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I started wondering: what did dinosaurs look like during a moult? Did some dinosaurs have wattles and combs like roosters?
These are the questions that all of my friends who are paleoartists are asking, and it makes right now a very exciting time to be doing dinosaur art!
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3 comments:
Nice! Finches are one of my favorite animals to draw too. Pet store has alot of them.
And that's an Oviraptor if I'm not mistaken.
Haha what a cutie looks like Billy.
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