My new Tuojiangosaurus painting

Hi everyone! I thought I might share my painting here on AE with everyone. A stegosaur in his forest home. I really enjoy doing non-traditional paleoart. I try for a lot of mood and atmosphere in most of my pieces and hopefully I succeeded on some level with this one. I'm in the middle of more works and hope to have some more to share with you.

I also started a new print on demand site where my paintings will be available on canvas, prints, posters and cards. I'll be adding art as I finish it. For now I just have my steggie painting.

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/angie-rodrigues.html

Anyway, thanks for looking at my work.

My best,

Angie

Guest Artist: Vasika Udurawane

Check out this wonderful paleoart from Vasika Udurawane!

Velociraptors

Citipati

Pinacosaurus

Platecarpus

Thalassomedon

Bonnerichthys

Kryostega

ART Evolved Banner Gallery

[I'm embarrassed to say that this post is very very overdue! It was meant to coincide with the launch of our "new" banner back in February, but I've had several distractions in the interim. Please accept my apologies everyone]

Ever since the launch of ART Evolved we had never been 100% happy with the initial banner we started out with. It is seen here below, minus the Trilobites that were added to it later.

The idea had been to show the skeleton on the left inspiring and leading up to the recreations on the right. However this didn't really work. The only clear indication was the theropod in the middle, with its half being drawn in and half not. Diminishing this narrative effect was the fact the wrong ends were coloured in and not. Overall this just wasn't going to do.

Then one day an idea hit us administrators. We had a whole site full of very talented artists, why not get them to help us fix it! A multi person piece of art would do just the trick to capture the diversity and variety of palaeo-art, and as a bonus incapsulate the community nature of this site.

This Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton was sent out as the basis for the banner, and the idea was members create their own T-Rex to match up with this skeleton so we could seamlessly stitch the various pieces together easily.

This was the result we got. We are rather pleased with it!

However the individual pieces we received are rather impressive on their own, and have up until never been seen on their own (or properly credits OOPS!). So as to fully credit (and show off the talents of) the contributors here is our Banner Gallery...

The Banner is composed of parts of the following pieces by:

Trish Arnold

Craig Dylke

Mo Hassan

Rachael Revelle

Peter Bond

Craig Dylke

Thank you to all these contributors!

We hope you enjoyed this mini gallery, the art contained within it, and ultimately the piece they have combined into in our banner. Hopefully the new banner captures the diversity and community themes we had always envisioned heading up this site.

Paleo: Loner

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles artist Jim Lawson is serializing Paleo, his comic about late Cretaceous dinosaurs online. Not really a paleontological rigorous comic, but the story of a group of tyrannosaurs, pretty anthropomorphized.
As Jim said, the progect Loner since a year has sat on a shelf. So he decided to publish the comic in the internet, on a dedicated blog: http://paleo-loner.blogspot.com/

Evolved Encounters: Glendon and Craig

Another installment of the new Encounters feature here on ART Evolved. Bringing you the run ins of our very international crew. With artists spread around the globe - from Alaska to Australia, Italy to Brazil - these sorts of encounters should be rare, yet we challenge all you palaeo-artists (AE members and followers alike) if you should encounter another AE regular be sure to record evidence and send it our way (artevolved@gmail.com).

We have yet another encounter from Canada (Toronto Ontario again)...

This time between ART Evolved Administrators Craig Dylke and Glendon Mellow (here seen in the lobby of the Royal Ontario Museum with [what I believe is the holotype] Prosaurolophus).

Throughout Craig's week visit to "The Centre of the Universe" (what we Canadians call Toronto) there were several get togethers of the our two families. While the wives are missing from this photo (as Glendon's Michelle was kind enough to take this one), star of these hang outs is front row and centre. That being Glendon's rather cute offspring Calvin!

We want to know about and see when members of our community (whether proper blog members or just readers/followers of the site) run into one another. Even if you live in the same city or stumble into one another at a far flung conference or country, please record it and share it with the rest of the community!

Stay tuned next week as Craig has another encounter up his sleeve, and it is a pretty impressive one geographically ;)

Symbiartic

Hey ART Evolved peeps, I have some recent news - the new Scientific American blog network has launched this week!  And I'm on it!

Head over and say welcome to Symbiartic! 
I'll be co-blogging with scientific illustrator Kalliopi Monoyios about art + science, scientific illustration, copyright issues, how new media change art, data visualization, science cartoons, comics, architecture, photography, fine art and much more. You may remember Kalliopi Monoyios from the blog An Eye for Science, sometimes featured on my Scumble posts on my personal blog, The Flying Trilobite. She was also the illustrator for the books Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin and Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

I'm completely thrilled Kalliopi is joining me on this blog, she's tremendous fun and it's been a real collaboration while we worked on getting this ready behind the scenes. Read her introduction post, Visual Beings: Meet Symbiartic, and my first post, Science-art: don't call it "Art". See if you can find ART Evolved on the infographic I created. 
One of the reasons I am so thrilled and honoured to be a part of the SciAm network, is it's a chance to spotlight the importance of illustration, art and images in the role of science communication and education. And few do it better than ART Evolved participants and paleo-artists. Head over and comment!  Let me know what prjects you might be working on at symbiartic.gm@gmail.com . 

Check out Symbiartic and follow us on Twitter @symbiartic. 
-Glendon Mellow

The Carboniferous Gallery

Welcome to ART Evolved's first Time Period time capsule: The Carboniferous Gallery!

A gallery about a time period might contain art showcasing the abiotic and biotic factors of that specific time.  The Carboniferous stretched from 356Mya to 299 Mya, and was a time of great tree-fern forests and lower sea levels.  The atmosphere contained 163% higher levels of oxygen then now, which, along with the high moisture of the forests, allowed arthropods and amphibians to grow to enormous sizes.  The amniotic egg evolved, allowing for furthure exploration of land by early reptiles.

The Carboniferous Gallery allows us to go back in time and witness life as it may have looked those millions of years ago...

Click on the artwork to enlarge them, and be sure to leave a comment below!

Megalocephalus and Phlegethontia by A. Gaeta

Two Phlegethontia linearis aïstopods are buried eel-style in hopes of being overlooked by a pair of Xenacanthus gracilis sharks. A Megalocephalus enchodus swims overhead. Linton OH, in the Pennsylvanian subperiod/subsystem. Watercolors on watercolor paper. 11" x 15".

Giant Orthocone Cephalopods by Craig Dylke

 Schematic reconstruction of Lepidodendron by David Bressan

Fig.5. Schematic reconstruction of Lepidodendron as adult, fertile individual and younger individual lacking branches with spore cones, probably the usual habit to be spotted in the Carboniferous forest. Depending from author and reconstruction method, the branches of the mature plant were displayed as standing upright or sag to the ground. The scale tree is named after the typical structure preserved on the bark - the leaf cushion - structure that supported small, needle like leaves covering the upper part of the plant.

Be sure to read David's Enter the Coal Swamp Forest: The Giant Lycopsid, the series on the reconstructions of the major plant groups in prehistoric landscapes over at History of Geology.

Giants Stalking Giants by Peter Bond

The giant dragonfly Meganeura monyi sits blissfully unaware on a branch, as the giant scorpion Pulmonoscorpius kirktonensis creeps ever so slowly towards it's victim.  Fossils show the scorpion to be 70cm (2.3ft) long, and the dragonfly's wingspan surpassed 75cm (2.5ft)!  The Carboniferous provided these prehistoric insects and arachnids with an atmosphere of increased oxygen levels, which many scientists believe led to the increased size of these critters.  Wouldn't mind one of these beauts as a pet...

Carboniferous Love by Trish Arnold

Carboniferous Dragonfly by Bruce-Earl Barr

Crassigyrinus scoticus by Nathaniel Marseglia

Eryops skeleton by Anthony Contoleon

Pen sketch based on the photo here.

Eryck the Eryops! by Dinorider d'Andoandor

When I was a kid I created many characters for a series of comic strips featuring prehistoric creatures ... so this is Eryck my Eryops!  I made this picture more than a decade ago.

Cycad watercolor study by Scott Elyard

Psaronius watercolor study by Scott Elyard

Lepidendron watercolor study by Scott Elyard

If YOU would like to participate in this, or any other gallery here at ART Evolved, send your work to artevolved@gmail.com.  While the Carboniferous Gallery is certainly not our largest gallery, it was an intriguing experiment in time capsules not focusing on a specific critter!

The next gallery DOES focus squarely on a specific type of critter - the Turtles!  Cowabunga dude!

The Turtle Gallery opens here September 1st 2011, so be sure to spend your Summer polishing up your shells!  So slow down, dive in, and send in your art-in-a-halfshell to artevolved@gmail.com by Sept 1st!

Thanks for stopping by, and spread the word to your friends about the next Gallery: Turtles!

Heinrich Mallison's Kentrosaurus defense

Hi guys! This piece I did for a paper bu Heinrich Mallison is now out. It's a mish-mash of 3D bits all painted together. Would love to hear what you think as this is the first work that approaches my ambition for paleoart. I'll try to write a bit about the process when I'm back in Germany.

Head over to Heinrich's post at palaeontologia electronica!

Pterosaur Restoration Pre-Production Thoughts

Hello paleo-enthusiasts! For a personal project at work I'm creating an animated restoration of Tupandactylus. I just started the model, and have been doing a decent amount of pterosaur reading the last few months.

Since I'm still in the VERY early stages, and am by no means a pterosaur expert, I wanted to go ahead and ask the community what common errors people typically make in pterosaur reconstructions that I should be aware of? Because of the short timeline of this project, I'm going against my instinct and trying not to get too sucked into the research, since the ultimate goal of this is more for eye-candy. Despite this, I would like it to feel authentic. If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know! And I will eventually get around to posting work-in-progress renders!

Thanks All!

  Evan