Member Bio: Peter Bond

PETER BOND

Teacher and amateur Artist
peterbond7@hotmail.com

Craig and I started ART Evolved for one reason. To share art and technique about recreating dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, plants and ancient landscapes. As someone who loves art of extinct life, I found that there really wasn't a community of amateur palaeo-artists on the net. ART Evolved aims to bring together everyone who shares our love for art from Earth's history.

As with most of our artist members, I started drawing dinosaurs at a very young age. My first dino sketch was probably a tyrannosaur as it was my favorite (and it still is!) Drawing evolved into ink, pencil crayons, watercolours, and acrylic paints. I remember painting a huge mural of a T-rex on my bedroom door, and then another one (below) at high school (jumping off a cliff - why was he jumping? I have no idea!) My dog, Toby, for scale.

After high school, I pursued a career in palaeontology, but only finished the geology degree. I realized then that, to really be a true palaeontologist, I'd have to do a masters and a phD - I was more interested in teaching. So that's what I did. In the end, I am not a palaeontologist but a public school teacher (where I am able to share my passion for science!)

My art is varied and evolving as life is, but I mainly experiment in pencil, ink, acrylic and watercolour paint (with dabblings in sculpture, pastel and conte.) Photography is also a passion of mine which might show up on this blog. Check out my personal blog, Bond's Blog, to see my photos (and rambles on my life). I am also a member of the creative production group Prehistoric Insanity Productions, which runs ART Evolved.

Below is a sampling of my prehistoric artwork over the years:

Triceratops horridus from the Belfast Natural History Museum in pencil

A series of cards depicting the heads of Alberta dinosaurs (left-right, top-down) Ornithomimus, Albertosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus, and Parasaurolophus.

Dinosaur cartoons

Tyrannosaurus rex in a thunderstorm in acrylics

Megalosaurus bucklandii in watercolour and photoshop

Minmi paravertebra in watercolour and photoshop

Ammonite in acrylics

I look forward to where ART Evolved ends up going. Hopefully becoming a unique place where anyone can submit prehistoric art and share in a creative, supportive educational environment. Sharpen your pencils, here we go...

PETER BOND
peterbond7@hotmail.com
Bond's Blog
Available for commissions, just email me!

Member Bio: Sean Craven

Hey, everybody! I’m Sean Craven and I have to confess that I’m not exactly sure how to approach this bio piece. See, in the past I’ve usually used these autobiographies as an excuse to either lie or tell deprecating truths about myself. But I’m trying to kick the habit…

I’m a writer, artist, and musician based in Berkeley, California, where I live with my spouse Karen Casino. I come from a blue-collar background and started working as a janitor and child-care assistant when I was thirteen and, with occasional breaks for education, I stayed in the workforce until my late thirties.


While I’m currently a full-time student, in the past I have made a living by writing internet cartoon scripts and my art has appeared in a variety of magazines. I’m also the art director and assistant editor of a small-press literary magazine, Swill. Right now I’m trying to find a way to make a living in some kind of creative capacity. My novel-in-progress is my main focus but I’m also trying to put my art out into the world. It’s all a gamble but hey. If you don’t play you can’t win, right?


I was lucky enough to have Maurice Lapp for my first art teacher. He had a classic approach to teaching art and everything I’ve got has its roots in what he taught me. Since those first lessons I’ve supplemented my education with classes in everything from botanical illustration to architectural perspective. But while I’ve studied a lot of the best current paleo artists, my scientific illustration and reconstruction techniques are self-taught.


Dinosaurs were the first real obsession I ever had; it’s interesting that I didn’t start trying to draw them until I was in my thirties, when I picked up a copy of Predatory Dinosaurs Of The World by Gregory Paul. This fit into a pattern – I’d find myself drifting away from my interest in paleontology only to run across some piece of media that captured my imagination and sucked me right back in.


When I was a small child, it was plastic dinosaurs. When I was in the fourth grade it was Robert Bakker’s Dinosaur Renaissance article in Scientific American. When I was a teenager, it was The Dinosaurs by William Stout, Bryon Preiss, and William Service. Then Predatory Dinosaurs Of The World. My most recent, and most serious involvement sprang from… Okay, it was the comic book Cavewoman by Budd Root. In the back of the comic he recommended Prehistoric Times magazine. I was intrigued, I got a subscription, and I fell in love with Tracy Ford’s How To Draw Dinosaurs column.


My first real introduction to the blogosphere came when Brian Switek of Laelaps used my Cambrian cartoon, first published in Prehistoric Times magazine, in a blog post.


I have two different approaches to paleo art. With one I start off with a good photograph of a mounted skeleton or a skeletal diagram. I figure out a pose, then trace the skeleton to fit the pose.


After that I flesh the animal out, basing my approach on as much research as is possible.


At other times, I prefer to work more loosely, drawing from my imagination.



In the future, I hope to bring these two approaches closer to one another, adding accuracy and detail to my imaginary drawings and adding life and flexibility to my more scientific pieces. I’m really thrilled to have been asked to join the Art Evolved crew and I hope you enjoy my efforts.

Sean Craven blogs at:
Renaissance Oaf

Member Bio: Mo Hassan

Hello fellow palaeo-art lovers, I’m Mo Hassan. The “Mo” is short for Muhammed, by the way. This is me with my favourite fossil ever, the Acadoparadoxides trilobites.

I’ve been a lifelong lover of animals and have been drawing them for twice as long. Since a very early age I could be seen with pens and paper and wildlife books, especially dinosaur ones. The precocious interest in the natural world, both as it is now, and how it once was, ultimately led me to my current choice of career.

I spend a lot of time at the world-famous Natural History Museum in London, where I work and study. My aim is to start a Ph.D. programme in vertebrate palaeontology in the next few years, and then ultimately be a researcher and theoretical palaeontologist. I love to impart knowledge, which is part of the reason why I started and have maintained The Disillusioned Taxonomist, so lecturing for me would not be out of the question, as part of my job. Incidentally, I chose the name for my blog due to the fact that I have always been interested in scientific names since I first heard about them in early childhood, so I naturally chose to study taxonomy. I then realised, whilst doing my Masters, that the world of taxonomy was changing, the role that DNA and other molecules play in the science of naming organisms has taken over from the classic descriptions of organisms from physical specimens; this is what has disillusioned me. This is the main reason for me to want to focus on palaeontology.

Here are some examples of early palaeo-artwork by myself. As you can see, I have been endowed with the gift of realistic drawing since a toddler!

Coelophysis, I think, at 8 years old

Carnotaurus, probably at 7 or 8 years old.

More recent examples include Dimetrodon, Huayangosaurus, Velociraptor and Tupuxuara.

In black and white, we also have Entelodon and Gomphotherium

I am more than honoured to have been invited to co-author this blog, as I greatly admire the work of my peers and feel humbled just to be here. My preferred media are colour pencil and graphite sketching pencils. I don’t have any special techniques, or favourite subjects to draw, although I prefer to draw birds, dinosaurs and skulls.

My formal art training has been minimal; I didn’t take art at high school, mostly due to the fact that I didn’t like being constrained, and was constantly criticised. I have taken two photography courses, however, one at AS-level (high school) and again as a part of my undergraduate degree, specialising in wildlife photography. I don’t know if this shows in my work, as I tend to take millions of pictures and then choose the best for my portfolio.

Mo Hassan

subhumanfreaks@hotmail.com

The Disillusioned Taxonomist

Member Profile: Zachary Miller

Greetings readers, and fellow paleo-artists! You might know me from When Pigs Fly Returns, my paleoart/gaming/dinosaur/rambling blog. Craig was kind enough to invite me to partake in this meeting of far-superior-to-my-own minds, and I leapt at the opportunity (Ach! Mein Leapin!). My origins are shadowed in mystery, yet I divulge them only here! I began my paleoart career at a very young age, though what particular age cannot be wrought from the eroding sands of time. I do remember my first drawing pad, and my first drawing on that drawing pad. It was an Ankylosaurus surrounded by palm trees. This is ironic, because ankylosaurs are the most difficult dinosaurs for me to draw these days. I began rampaging through technical literature in college, and my collection of technical papers now fills five large tupperwares (and is ever-growing, thanks to my colleagues). I attended my first SVP conference last year with Scott Elyard and my mind was blown. Although I draw mostly dinosaurs, I am not against restoring other prehistoric critters, including mammals and pterosaurs.

My art philosophy comes down to primary source material. If I can't get good reference material to draw an animal, it's not worth restoring. Furthermore, there must be enough material available to produce a reasonably accurate restoration. So you won't see a Masiakasaurus out of me, but you might get a Carnotaurus. I've always used traditional pencil and ink media, mostly because the computer age has largely passed me by. I once used color pencils to color my drawings, but I've since learned that B&W actually looks better--it doesn't hide my lines. My parents bought me a Wacom Bamboo "Fun" tablet for Christmas, so I've been experimenting with digital media lately (check out my blog for early attempts). I've also developed a nack for pumping out skull restorations, which I really enjoy.

I'll leave you with a few of my pieces. Regular readers to WPF will probably recognize most of them. I look forward to my endeavors with the Art Evolved crew. I might learn a thing or two in the process. I mean, just look at Ville's stuff up there. I think I'm already outclassed! From top to bottom: An Einiosaurus skull draft I'm working on; a Daspletosaurus skull; a Dimorphodon painting (acrylics); a cartoon of a Pachyrhinosaurus taking a mud bath, and; Henodus, a turtle-mimic placodont.

Member Bio: Ville Sinkkonen

I was kindly enough invited to participate into this blog so here I am wring my Bio post.

Hey, I'm Ville Sinkkonen, the wanderer of arctic tundra of Finland slayer of polar bears et cetera et cetera.
In normal life I'm undergrad student working my way trough achieving Bachelor of sciences, after of which I can finally specialise into Paleontology.
Getting into vertebrate paleontology in a country where we have only scraps of vertebrate fossil does not seem all that intelligent career choice, but honestly I can't imagine myself doing anything else.

I, like probably everyone here, started doodling dinosaurs in kindergarden but it wasn't really until I reached tender age of 15 till I started seriously practising drawing and boy did I draw! My old notebooks are all full of sketches of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
Early on I was heavily influenced by the work of Gregory S. Paul. and that shows quite clearly on my earlier works like this Torvosaurus here.





When I grew older other influences creeped in like Todd Marshall, Mauricio Anton and more recently Michael Skrepnick.

I used to have pretty narrow focus when it came to prehistoric creatures (That focus being ofcourse the dinosaurs) but my years in university have thought me larger appreciation for ancient life and reading blogs like Darren Naish's Tetrapodzoology opened my even wider.

I tend to use all kinds of tools of trade, but I think I use ink and pencils most of the time followed by photoshop.

Recently I had the privilege to illustrate several ancient critters to Finnish museum of Natural History, and although that took lot's of time from my studies I can't deny the fact that it was a blast.

I don't think I have anything else to add so I'll end it here. I leave you with some samples of my paleoart. I hope you enjoy them!




You can see more of my artwork in my DeviantArt gallery here.


Cheers!!