Re: Peter Trusler (again)

[Brian Choo <bchoo@cyllene.uwa.edu.au>]

Speaking of which...

I've just sauntered back from the WA Museum artists workshop held by the
man himself. What can I say... It rocked big time! Just about all the local
natural history artists, amateur and professional, were there - me, Tony
Winberg, Martin Thompson, Cate and Travis Tischler* from paleogarden etc.

(*check out their site: http://www.paleogarden.com/home.html )

We were taken step by step through the planning, preliminaries and
execution of some of his more famous works including the Megalania vs
Genyornis from Wildlife of Gondwana and the frozen Leaellynasaura.
Exhaustive!

Perhaps the greatest lesson was that reconstructions where the artist
"chickens out" with regards to definative interpretation can often lead to
the most thought provoking images. For example in the Meg vs mihirung pic,
with uncertainty regarding the lizard's behaviour, he placed both an adult
bird and a nest before the varanid - is the Megalania an active predator
going after the parent or a scavenger after the eggs?

One question thats always been on my mind regarding the frozen
Leaellynasaur was answered (where are it's cheek pouches that are present
in all of his other hypsi reconstructions?): In this carcass the cheek was
shrivelled/torn off so he could display the diagnostic features of the
teeth and jaw.

Wish you were there!
Brian


>    Hi everybody, For the WE... OK, everybody knows this marvellous  Peter
>Trusler's painting featuring _Muttaburrasaurus_, _Timimus_,
>_Leaellynasaura_, _Minmi_, the dwarf allosaur... It was used for a sheet
>of stamps. There's a HUGE view of this painting  here:
>http://upr.sdsmt.edu/dinosaurs/DinoStamp.jpg   Friendly - Luc J. "Aspidel"
>BAILLY.