Re: Illustrating Dino Skin

[Danvarner@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/19/01 6:33:06 PM Pacific Daylight Time, j_mallon@hotmail.com writes:


<< Do any of you paleo(life) artists out there in Dinoland have any suggestions 
as to where I might be able to find some good refs for drawing dinosaur 
skin?  I'm talking about books/websites that show the nitty-gritty details 
of reptilian skin and even bird feathers. >>
    
       Just the opinion of an old impressionist here. Don't worry about it. I've done a lot of bird pictures in my time and have spent at least some time every day for about forty years observing them. It's very seldom that you can see even a single feather. Check it out yourself with your own eyeballs. Spots and bands and various patterns are obvious, but they function as part of a whole, not an array of individual pieces. In natural lighting feathers and scales cease to be diagrams and at a modest distance blend into each other. Wildlife art that depicts every feather or every hair or every scale reflects an artificial means of attributing value to an artwork rather than anything that has to do with reality. It's coming from the intellect rather than the eyes.
      In "reptiles" crocs, of course are an exception with their big scutes and spines. Ankylosaurs and stegosaurs also. Anything that would serve as a signal would stand out also (like the tuberosities on the muzzles of tyrannosaurs). In the non-feathered dinosaurs the basic backround "pavement" is so small that it would disappear as do the individual feathers of birds.
       It just seems to me that so many restorations are so hyper-detailed that that basic structure and form are lost. I see many bare outlines filled-in with very busy little circular things. The forest is getting lost in the trees sometimes. You have to be careful. I highly recommend Chas.R.Knight's _Animal Anatomy_book (Knight was definitely NOT an impressionist, but sometimes painted like one) for several discussions about this subject as well as feather patterns. He talks about seeing a tiger though the stripes. 
       As for dinosaur skin, Greg Paul, who else?  DV