At Syn Studio this semester I’m taking a course called Nature Sketching, in which we study a different variety of animal each week. From real (albeit dead) fish we moved on to live reptiles (a snake and lizard borrowed from a local pet shop), and last week we visited McGill University’s Redpath Museum. Our homework was to push one of our dinosaur skeleton sketches further, and fully flesh out our chosen subject. I chose the raptor-like Dromaeosaurus albertensis, a local North american species.

I started with a quick sketch on site, managing to get an interesting angle by crouching awkwardly in front of the little skeleton. Luckily the museum wasn’t too crowded, otherwise I don’t think I could’ve managed… not to say I wouldn’t have tried!

Next came the research phase, where I google’d the references I needed to come up with a believable dinosaur in the end. Turns out popular belief is that this guy had a feather-like coat! Bird lover that I am, this came as a pleasant surprise.

While it could use more contrast (something I really need to work on with my pencil sketches), I’m quite pleased with the final outcome. I have an urge to go a step further and do a coloured version… or one with pen and markers. We’ll see!

Thanks for looking, have yourselves a good day! :)