Joseph Leidy and His Discoveries

[TyrannosaurusRex]

Another day, another art project for school I’m working on. This time it’s supposed to be inspired by google doodles, so I chose to do the 19th century paleontologist Joseph Leidy. He’s lesser known than his student, Cope, but his finds contributed hugely to North American paleontology. 
 

My first concept was to simply have him standing with a Troodon to the left, but that was quickly scrapped. 

I then went with some light thumbnail sketches, and found one I liked before starting to do an inked version of it. 

This ended up being the more finalized thumbnail sketch of the piece. He is seen brushing away the dirt on a Troodon bone, with a Troodon watching, and a herd of Edmontosaurus watching the oncoming rain clouds in the far background. 

 

 

I then cut a piece of matboard to size to fit the assignment and started drawing the composition. 
 

I’m using an opaque watercolor for this piece. 

 

A quick photo to check value issues. The Edmontosaurus in the foreground is simply blocked in here, I have not started actual work on it, which it why it remains so dark and blocky. 

Pretty quickly I could see the mountains were much too dark, and the rain is much too light. The grass in the foreground is much too light as well. 
 

I had 20 minutes to fix things before class ended, so I went with repainting the sky, as well as the mountains. I’ll have to touch this up. I’ll also have to repaint the Edmontosaurus in the background.

 

size on this piece is I think 12 x 30”. 

 

I am also doing another Troodon in ceramic clay, which will be fired at a later date in a kiln. Pretty sure my classmates are confused why I’m doing dinosaurs in a pottery class. 

 

[TyrannosaurusRex]

more progress. Getting closer and closer to finishing this piece. 

[Nanotyrannus35]

Looks really nice!

[Mark Kmiecik]

Good job. Keep us posted on your progress.

[Mahnmut]

Great work!

[Dinoreplicas]

Looking good!

[fossilhunter21]

Looking very nice!

[TyrannosaurusRex]

Another updated photo. The piece is too large to photograph well with my cameras quality, so I’ll be scanning this in. It needs some cleaning up, and then proper framing. 

 

As well as an update on the Troodon. 
 

This piece is done, and waiting to be kiln fired. Each feather was added one by one, so there’s a chance some of them may not take during the fire and will fall out. It must remain suspended until bisque fired in order to protect the legs, due to the fact that unfired, ‘bone dry’ clay is incredibly brittle. It will break if it stands currently, but this issue will be fixed once fired. 

 

 

Have also started on this project. This will eventually turn into a wax model of an Acrocanthus on a shoreline with water ripples and tracks. The wax will receive a ceramic shell around it, be melted out, and then have molten iron poured into the mold. Anatomy is very clunky currently due to the fact the wax is well over a hundred degrees and I can only apply it a little at a time. This will need to be finished by this weekend. 
 

The neck is too long, it will be cut and reattached, I simply have it elongated for planning purposes. The legs also must be thinned, when this photo was taken the wax was too warm to trim.