Prehistoric Sketches

So I’ve put together a few posts lately that have been talking about this prehistoric project that I’m working on in my spare time, but I have yet to show any work for it. So I haven’t gotten a title for the book yet but inspiration will strike all in good time and that will be taken care of. Regardless I figured now is as good a time as any to start showing some stuff so I’m taking it from the beginning with this post to show some of the loose and rough preliminary thumbnail sketches that I’ve been working from for a lot of the animals that I’m planning on featuring in the art book. My intention is to do 90% of the pages as vertical layouts and a handful of over-sized 2 page spreads featuring some more interesting animals in a larger horizontal layout, still deciding who gets to be a giant featured creature. Another thing that I stuck with from the beginning of the project is that I wanted a whole animal displayed on every page, so I’ve tried to make every layout interesting and still try to show as much of the animal as possible without cropping anything off page. The plan is to get about 120 finished pieces out of this project and I’m on the way to almost being done with this preliminary stage, granted as I keep working through the different creatures some of the sketches evolve and change into different finishes when a pose just doesn’t work out. I really wanted to finish the whole pencil phase of the project before moving to the next step and inking everything so I’m starting with thumbnails then moving on to finished pencils, I’ve gotten about 90 sketches done so far and about 35-40 finished pencils with a fully realized animal in a complete background. In the end everything is being lightboxed and inked on 9×12 100lb. Strathmore 300 Bristol Board so that they hold up a little better than my usual Hammermill 30Lb. ultra white laser printer stock that I’ve been lazy about switching off of. I’ve never really been a fan of bristol board but there is an expectation that comes with finished art being on a quality heavyweight surface so for this one I figure I’ll fight through. Anyway as you can see the intention isn’t just to do a book of dinosaurs but to really showcase all the wildly interesting creatures throughout the fossil record. From here on out I’ll keep posting up more finished pencil pieces and maybe the last quarter of the thumbs and hopefully keep all of you interested as I move into the final phases and start showing off finished inks and designed page layouts.