My art in 2023 (1/12)
January: Microraptor and the Flowers. I started this year out making paleoart watercolours and never really stopped. This one is about a Microraptor investigating the first flowers she’s ever seen. The flowers are Lingyuananthus, a lovely little fossil flower described in an even lovelier paper that was not behind a paywall for once.
#MyArt #paleoart #Microraptor #flowers #Cretaceous #January #MyArtIn2023
My art in 2023 (2/12)
February: Orthocones Descend. Having moved into a new apartment and made a timeline covering the walls, the paleozoic looked awfully empty, so I made a big effort to expand my horizons and do art showing creatures I’d never drawn before. Showing orthocones descending vertically on their prey made for a fun composition too.
#MyArt #paleoart #orthocone #trilobite #ordovician #MyArtIn2023
My art in 2023 (3/12)
March: Sinosauropteryx does not want to share its tree. I still can barely believe we know the colours of both Sinosauropteryx and Psittacosaurus. Dinosaur colours always felt like something we’d never figure out without literal actual time travel before we figured them out.
#paleoart #MyArt #Sinosauropteryx #Psittacosaurus #Cretaceous #sunset #MyArtIn2023
My art in 2023 (4/12)
April: Hadrocodium’s mossy home. I got the idea for one of the tiniest mammals of all time making its home in some moss on a tree while hiking in Switzerland and coming across some truly impressive moss beards.
#MyArt #paleoart #Jurassic #Hadrocodium #Tatisaurus #MyArtIn2023
My art in 2023 (5/12)
May: Procompsognathus’s cliff climb. A Procompsognathus sneaking up on a showboating Peteinosaurus by climbing a cliff, while a Paratypothorax goes to take a drink.
#MyArt #paleoart #Triassic #Procompsognathus #Peteinosaurus #Paratypothorax #MyArtIn2023
My art in 2023 (6/12)
June: Anomalocaris, Dragon of the Cambrian. The realisation that most Cambrian creatures were tiny gave me the idea of a whole bunch of them hiding from a 40 cm long Anomalocaris while in positions reminiscent of a D&D party facing off against a dragon.
#Anomalocaris #Cambrian #Opabinia #Hallucigenia #paleoart #MyArt #MyArtIn2023
My art in 2023 (7/12)
July: Caihong and the Kalligrammatids. Kalligrammatids were neuropterans that superficially resembled large butterflies, but unlike them their wings were transparent! I combined them with the gorgeous iridescence of Caihong and backlighting for a fun experiment.
#MyArt #Jurassic #Caihong #Kalligrammatid #silhouette #paleoart #MyArtIn2023
My art in 2023 (8/12)
August: Spring on the mammoth steppe. When the time came to do some art set in the Quaternary, I decided to depict a real life location and how it would have changed in the past few hundred thousand years. This spot is just west of Baden-Baden (which is in the glacier valley to the upper left), on the edge of the Schwartzwald. I also enjoyed depicting an ice age spring. It wasn’t always snow and ice.
#MyArt #Quaternary #IceAge #Mammoth #MyArtIn2023 #Megaloceros
My art in 2023 (9/12)
September: Darwinius and Geiseltaliellus’s stare-off. The Paleogene was the last remaining Phanerozoic period I hadn’t done any art of, so I drew this little scene in the Messel Pit formation depicting a Darwininius and a lizard who do not enjoy sharing a tree.
#MyArt #Paleogene #Eocene #Darwinius #Geiseltaliellus #Gastornis #MyArtIn2023 #paleoart
My art in 2023 (10/12)
October: Inostrancevia family at sunrise. I hadn’t drawn Permian synapsids in a while at this point so they were overdue for a paleoart. I also felt like going absolute ham with my reds. The sunrise and Permian volcanism made for a convenient excuse but really, this is just for me.
#MyArt #Inostrancevia #therapsid #Permian #desert #red #MyArtIn2023 #paleoart
My art in 2023 (11/12)
November: Wind, Courage, and Wings. This one’s a birthday gift for my friend, depicting a lovely fable in Genshin Impact about how the wind god Barbatos taught the first birds to fly.
My art in 2023 (12/12)
December: The Zanclean Flood. 6 million years ago, the movement of the continents cut the Mediterranean off from the oceans. Since more water evaporates from the Mediterranean than it receives from rivers, this resulted in the sea drying up and becoming an incredibly deep, dry, salty lowland. Until 5.3 million years ago, when the Strait of Gibraltar formed and the entire sea was refilled in a massive flood.
#MyArt #Neogene #Pliocene #ZancleanFlood #paleoart #MyArtIn2023
Vickysaurus