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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (1/12)

January: Microraptor and the Flowers. I started this year out making paleoart watercolours and never really stopped. This one is about a Microraptor investigating the first flowers she’s ever seen. The flowers are Lingyuananthus, a lovely little fossil flower described in an even lovelier paper that was not behind a paywall for once.

A watercolour painting depicting a Microraptor looking at flowers. It is a small four-winged theropod dinosaur. The view is tilted downward, observing the scene diagonally from above. The flowers are growing between a slightly charred tree's roots. They have orange petals arranged in two paired rows opposite each other. There are many little insects going about their insect business around.
#MyArt#paleoart#Microraptor
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (2/12)

February: Orthocones Descend. Having moved into a new apartment and made a timeline covering the walls, the paleozoic looked awfully empty, so I made a big effort to expand my horizons and do art showing creatures I’d never drawn before. Showing orthocones descending vertically on their prey made for a fun composition too.

A watercolour painting showing an underwater scene looking upward. A large number of orthocones are descending through the water column. They are large cephalopods in long shells, swimming vertically. In the foreground, one of them is about to catch a trilobite, its beak opened and its tentacles ready to snatch it up.
#MyArt#paleoart#orthocone
Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (3/12)

March: Sinosauropteryx does not want to share its tree. I still can barely believe we know the colours of both Sinosauropteryx and Psittacosaurus. Dinosaur colours always felt like something we’d never figure out without literal actual time travel before we figured them out.

A watercolour depicting a Psittacosaurus trying to climb up to a tree on a slight incline. But at the base of the tree is a group of Sinosauropteryx. One of them makes a threat display at the Psittacosaurus, the others don't seem particularly welcoming either. They are small theropod dinosaurs covered in simple protofeathers coloured red and white. In the background, a Yutyrannus takes a bath, while pterosaurs fly overhead and titanosaurs graze on the treeline. The scene is set at sunset.
#paleoart#MyArt#Sinosauropteryx
Dec 29, 2023, 09:57 PM·Public·Web
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (4/12)

April: Hadrocodium’s mossy home. I got the idea for one of the tiniest mammals of all time making its home in some moss on a tree while hiking in Switzerland and coming across some truly impressive moss beards.

A watercolour painting depicting a close-up of a Ginkgo-like tree's trunk. Its bark is rough and covered in several patches of moss and lichen. There is a small yellow beetle wandering over the bark. In the upper part of the biggest moss patch two Hadrocodium are facing off against a snakefly. The Hadrocodium are extremely small mammals covered in brown fur. They have somewhat rectangular snouts, large whiskers, no visible outer ears, and tails. One of them is half lying down in the moss, guarding two small white eggs. The other is rearing up and threatening the snakefly. The snakefly is a black insect a little smaller than the Hadrocodium. It has a long, thin body with many segments, long wriggly legs, long antennae, and a long oviposterior. In the background, past the tree, the face and shoulder of a Tatisaurus are visible. It is a basal thyreophoran dinosaur with grey, scaly skin. It has a series of spikey bone protrusions on its head and neck and wide, rectangular pupils like a goat. Its mouth is half opened as it looks at the tree's backside. Above its head a large Megalopteran insect resembling a dobsonfly is flying downward. It has four wings and large mouthparts. Behind them is a dry, rocky landscape with impressive rock structures formed by erosion and occasional plants. The scene's foreground is in the tree's shadow, while the background is softly lit by a cloudy sky.
#MyArt#paleoart#Jurassic
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (5/12)

May: Procompsognathus’s cliff climb. A Procompsognathus sneaking up on a showboating Peteinosaurus by climbing a cliff, while a Paratypothorax goes to take a drink.

A watercolour painting looking diagonally downward at a jagged, cliffy landscape. The foreground of the painting is taken up by the upper parts of an island-like cliff. Its steep sides are jagged and rocky and there is a Procompsognathus climbing upward. It is a small, coelophysid dinosaur - two legged, though it is using its front paws to climb up too. Aside from the head and feet, it is covered in brown protofeathers that resemble fur. Its tail is brown-and-white striped. Its head and feet are greyish-green, with a blue 'bandit mask' across the face. The Procompsognathus has nearly reached the forested clifftop and is about to bite the dangling tail of one of three Peteinosauruses. They are small, basal pterosaurs with large, slightly boxy heads and short wings. They are sitting on top of trees on the clifftop. Two of them are perched and watching the third Peteinosaurus - the one whose tail is about to be bitten - stand up with its wings extended in display. They are different shades of reddish-brown, with the displaying one nearly yellow with orange markings on its wings. On the left side of the watercolour, past the edge of the cliff, we can see another, lower cliff in the background. A narrow stream of water descends to it over a waterfall, then runs horizontal for a few metres, and then falls off in another waterfall. At the horizontal bit, a Paratypothorax is about to drink. It is a heavily armoured aetosaur - a herbivorous crocodile relative.
#MyArt#paleoart#Triassic
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (6/12)

June: Anomalocaris, Dragon of the Cambrian. The realisation that most Cambrian creatures were tiny gave me the idea of a whole bunch of them hiding from a 40 cm long Anomalocaris while in positions reminiscent of a D&D party facing off against a dragon.

A watercolour painting of an underwater scene depicting a bunch of Cambrian organisms. Central and by far the largest of them all is Anomalocaris, a strange brown arthropod with long, curved mouthparts and many wavy swimming limbs. It is lit from behind and casts a dark, ominous shadow over most of the scene, while a cloud of brown dust emanates around it. The other creatures are all far smaller and all arranged to look at Anomalocaris in a rocky undersea landscape with several sponges. They include Opabinia, a bizarre colourful creature with five eyes; Hallucigenia, a long purple wormy creature with yellow spikes on its back and five pairs of feet; Pikaia, a worm-like pale grey chordate with a thickened area on its back; Canadia, a spiny purple worm-like creature; Burgessia, a round green arthropod with a long tail and antennae on a higher rock than most others; Marella, an arthropod with many long curved bits arranged in vaguely T-like shapes; and Elrathia, a ruddy trilobite. Each of them has some sort of rock or small ridge between them and the much larger Anomalocaris. The foreground is largely brown where the light falls on it, and the background behind Anomalocaris is blue sea, brighter towards the upper left where the light is coming from. The shadows are dark and ominous, especially the ones cast by Anomalocaris.
#Anomalocaris#Cambrian#Opabinia
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (7/12)

July: Caihong and the Kalligrammatids. Kalligrammatids were neuropterans that superficially resembled large butterflies, but unlike them their wings were transparent! I combined them with the gorgeous iridescence of Caihong and backlighting for a fun experiment.

A highly contrasted watercolour depicting a Caihong, a small feathered dinosaur, looking at a Kalligrammatid in a Sequoia tree while other Kalligrammatids fly around. The background is black and the foreground is lit sharply from behind, showing only silhouettes and transparent wings. Caihong is covered in bright blue and green feathers on its neck and head, while dimmer blue feathers dominate on its back and wings. The Kalligrammatid in the tree has large yellow-and grey wings that mimic the head of a maniraptoran dinosaur. They have a sharp dividing line resembling a mouth with teeth along their middle and a bright blue eyespot. A second member of the species is flapping around. Other Kalligrammatids are flying around too; several of them have eyespots. One of them instead has many smaller white spots amidst a dark area on the edge of its wings. Their wings are transparent and form the brightest parts of the image with their backlighting, only dimming where they are shaded by the insects' bodies or another wing behind them. Although their wings do resemble those of butterflies, they are clearly separate unlike those of butterflies, and the hindwings in particular are swept further backwards. The insects' bodies, although mostly only visible in silhouette, resemble those of other lacewings rather than butterflies.
#MyArt#Jurassic#Caihong
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (8/12)

August: Spring on the mammoth steppe. When the time came to do some art set in the Quaternary, I decided to depict a real life location and how it would have changed in the past few hundred thousand years. This spot is just west of Baden-Baden (which is in the glacier valley to the upper left), on the edge of the Schwartzwald. I also enjoyed depicting an ice age spring. It wasn’t always snow and ice.

A watercolour depicting a flowering steppe landscape in spring on the edge of a snowy mountain range. It is a sunny day, there are many colourful flowers amidst the grasses, and a small river runs meandering through the left side of the image, starting in a valley in the mountains. A raven flies over the entire scene. Below it, there are steppe mammoths bathing in the river. There are seven of them: four adults, all with tusks though one of them has a broken tusk, and three calfs of various sizes. They are large, furry brown elephants, though not as furry as woolly mammoths and with straighter tusks. Two of them are spraying water from their snouts and they are all having a good time. Across the river, a Megaloceros is kneeling to eat some riverbank plants. It is a large deer with extremely impressive antlers. In the lower right corner are two roe deer, quite small compared to the megafauna, keeping an eye on their surroundings. Further in the background we see a herd of steppe bison. They are large, beefy bovids with a big bump on their backs. There are about twenty of them, mostly adults but some smaller young mixed in, and they leave a muddy trampled and grazed trail behind them. Even farther away there are four wolves observing the bison. Behind the wolves the mountains start. Very soon after the landscape's height starts increasing, it becomes snow-covered, and barely any bare rock is visible on the icy mountains.
#MyArt#Quaternary#IceAge
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (9/12)

September: Darwinius and Geiseltaliellus’s stare-off. The Paleogene was the last remaining Phanerozoic period I hadn’t done any art of, so I drew this little scene in the Messel Pit formation depicting a Darwininius and a lizard who do not enjoy sharing a tree.

A watercolour painting showing a tropical lakeside scene in evening light. The branches of an Elaeodendron tree form the foreground, and they are darker than the rest of the painting. Sitting on one of the branches is Darwinius, a primate with long limbs and tail and a lemur-like snout. Its shaggy fur is brown and it is sitting in a fairly relaxed position, tail and one leg dangling, arms resting on the branch and the leg. It throws a side-eyeing look over its shoulder at a Geiseltaliellus sitting on a different branch. This is a large green lizard with an extremely long tail, and it glares back just as much. Several insects can be spotted amidst the tree's leaves: a dragonfly, and a bunch of large ants. Most of these are dead, having bitten into a leaf in a 'death grip', and now have a parasitic fungus growing out of them. The background shows a lake at sunset, bats flying low over the surface. The shores are densely forested, but a more open, grassy patch at the right features several animals. Chief among them are two Gastornis, large herbivorous birds. They have sturdy yellow beaks, long necks, thick bodies, brown-and-white feathers, and fluffy upturned tails. They are sitting close to each other and are possibly a couple. Another animal on this grassy beach is Eurohippus, a small ancestor of the horse. It is no more than a third as big as the sitting Gastornises, but ignores them and drinks from the water. Its fur is grey and it has a big bushy horse tail.
#MyArt#Paleogene#Eocene
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (10/12)

October: Inostrancevia family at sunrise. I hadn’t drawn Permian synapsids in a while at this point so they were overdue for a paleoart. I also felt like going absolute ham with my reds. The sunrise and Permian volcanism made for a convenient excuse but really, this is just for me.

#MyArt#Inostrancevia#therapsid
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (11/12)

November: Wind, Courage, and Wings. This one’s a birthday gift for my friend, depicting a lovely fable in Genshin Impact about how the wind god Barbatos taught the first birds to fly.

A watercolour illustrating the Genshin Impact fable of how the first birds achieved flight. The Anemo god Barbatos, in his human guise as Venti the bard, is sitting at the foot of a tree, addressing a few maniraptoran dinosaurs beseeching him. He is depicted as a young man in a blue-green cloak, a hat with several plumes on it, holding a lyre. The dinosaurs who he is addressing with a slight smirk and a finger raised are an oviraptorosaur, a mid-sized dromaeosaur, and a small troodontid. A fourth, four-winged microraptorine dinosaur is showing interest in the gem on his left shoe. In the lower right of the image, two other dinosaurs are vigorously flapping their wings while standing in place, not very succesfully trying to fly. Behind them, six paravian dinosaurs are boldly leaping off a cliff, their wings extended to catch the wind, and the ones already past the cliff are flying. Behind them is a wide green landscape of cliffs.
#MyArt#paleoart#GenshinImpact
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Vickysaurus

My art in 2023 (12/12)

December: The Zanclean Flood. 6 million years ago, the movement of the continents cut the Mediterranean off from the oceans. Since more water evaporates from the Mediterranean than it receives from rivers, this resulted in the sea drying up and becoming an incredibly deep, dry, salty lowland. Until 5.3 million years ago, when the Strait of Gibraltar formed and the entire sea was refilled in a massive flood.

A watercolour painting depicting a southward view from the tip of the rock of gibraltar, 5.3 million years ago. Where the strait of Gibraltar currently is, there is instead a gigantic waterfall producing much mist. The bottom of the waterfall cannot be seen in the mist, and downstream from it only vague glimpses of a great mudslide can be glimpsed through the mist. Large chunks of land are breaking off from the southern side of the forming strait and falling into the mist, most of them surrounded by tiny distant falling trees and rocks. Fish and a distant humpback whale are visible falling in the cascade too. There are a few white sea birds visible trying to catch the fish. Above the ocean surface four Pelagornis fly. They are very large birds with narrow black wings and white bodies. In the foreground, a gerbil, mouse, wall lizard, barbary macaque, and beetle are visible on the tip of the Rock of Gibraltar. They are watching the distant catastrophe with a concerned yet mesmerised look, except for the beetle which is going about its beetly business. The weather is overcast and the colours are a bit muted.
#MyArt#Neogene#Pliocene
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Pollinators

@Vickysaurus. It’s a wonderful painting of Baden Baden in the spring. #Germany, #mammoth, #steppebison.

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Vickysaurus

@Pollinators Thank you very much! I first came to this spot in real life at sunset, the end of a long hike that had started in France. So I had photos and memories to work off and all!

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Pollinators

@Vickysaurus. Art is wonderful. Thank you for all the hashtags ideas.

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Pollinators

@Vickysaurus. I hope our young nieces switch to dinosaurs after painting a few more flowers in vases. And we like flowers in vases.

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Pollinators

@Vickysaurus. The little mammals have to start a home somewhere.

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