Summer has been a bit crazy. Four weeks in Montana digging with a great crew for wicked cool dinosaurs to just over a week teaching Dinosaur Art in Mongolia. It took me two weeks just to get over the jet-lag.

Any way, here are some fun pictures from my travels. 

 This fella was dead by the time I took this picture but a friend of his made it all the way back to Philadelphia from Wyoming for the Museum's Bug Fest!

 

The two shots above where from Mongolia. The one with the Dinosaur shows all of the students who spent the week learning dinosaur anatomy for artists. I will post more on Mongolia soon along with some of the student art that came about from our lessons.

This is a link to a great piece on an exhibit I had the extreme pleasure to work on and do the final illustration for.



Hope you enjoyed watching. The time-lapse portion of the video covers about 6 hours of my life drawing in chalk with visitors watching and asking lots of questions. It was a great day!!

Been working on a project for several years off and on. some pieces have been shared here and some on the Book of Faces. The feed back from professionals and fans has been a real driver. Some people have pushed me way out of my comfort zones and caused me to grow as an artist. This last project has been a work in black and white. The project is finished as far as the art part goes unless there are any last hour needs. I am looking forward to finding color again however I will never be able to set the black and white on the shelf.
Any way here are some highlights from my journey into black and white dinosaurs.

Fun with ink and lines.

More from the dead.

This is for those of you that might find your self in a museum with dioramas in the near future. Things to remember are that school children will normally be in museums in the mornings until about 1:30. Afternoons are the best time to have halls mostly to yourself. However sketching while students watch can have its benefits as children will say exactly what they think. "Dude that is a cool house!!!""Its the tiger.""Ohhh."
Bringing large sketch boards or sketch pads can be a problem as visitors will bump them. Also if you plan on bringing an easel call first. Many museums do not like to have easels or tripods in their halls.
Bring a bag for you sketch book and other supplies like a snack and something to drink.
The more willing you are to share your art with folks the more cool things seem to happen. I have been given tours of other museum's collections a few times just because some one asked what I was doing and I was open to talking about my love of natural history museums and sketching from their exhibits. You never know when you are talking to some one who loves their work and is excited to show it off.

Enjoy your selves and get out to a museum!

~Jason

Sketching from the dead

Dioramas are wicked cool for artists trying to become more adept at sketching animals. First you can get really close to the animals and they don't try to eat you. Bonus right?! Second the critters stay freaking still totally unlike the caffeine hyped squirrels that hang about the city park system. Thirdly museums often have skeletal elements from the diorama animals in their collections which can often help figure out fur obscured body elements.

All that said, I spent last night drawing from the dioramas of the Academy of Natural Sciences after hours. Sketching at the museum is a great way to spend time and to get your skills going. I spent most of my time in African hall avoiding the animals I have drawn before.

I do like to sketch in ball point pen so you can still see mistakes and the history of the sketch. The first lines and often the lightest are the basic shape or sketch map. Then I work quickly shaping the animal or animals in greater detail as I go. Shadows can be handled very loosely or you can layer hatch marks or lines to gradate shadow and ball point pens work well for both.

I used to carry several pencil types, several eraser types and colored pencils along with my sketch book. but I have scrapped them all except the sketch book and pen. Some times I will still bring colored pencils but I find notes on color to be fine.

That is all I have for now. Enjoy!

~Jason      

Its not all just dinosaurs kids. Really...

So I have spent the last two weeks with a fossil fish head. It is a beautiful specimen. I will post a photo of it as soon as I have permission from its collection manager.

Fish are strange critters with far too many skull bones. The fish in question is a Cretaceous fish called Enchodus. Life restorations can be challenging but luck would have it that in this case I have been guided by a couple of great paleo folks from The New Jersey State Museum, Jason Schein and David Parris.  Some of what I find cool about this fish are the heavy brow and sure the teeth are totally wicked cool. The fossil I am working from is incredibly complete and beautiful but full of surprises for the researchers and for me. You will see more from me about this fish soon as we continue to learn more about this animal who was first published by Joseph Leidy at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University about one hundred and fifty years ago.