Details from the Jurassic Sea Painting
The dinosaur painting I posted the other day is quite large and detailed, so I've added some closeups. This painting reminds me of a painting I did ten years ago of an underwater scene from the west coast of Canada.
I had fun painting a warm water scene this time, and although I wish there were more plants to work with I decided to keep it simple and focus on the animals. These pictures are slightly smaller than life-sized (er, relative to the painting, not the dinosaurs) and you can see the canvas texture.
What truly amazed me about composing this scene was learning about the sizes of these dinosaurs. I had the challenge of working in different depths of field as well; the close-up ammonite and shark are not as large in real life as the plesiosaur and turtle. I tried to show which objects were farther away underwater by adding more layers of transparent blue, since you would be viewing them through more layers of ocean water. To give you a reference point, the sea turtle would be larger than an SUV in real life, and the bird on the rock would be about a foot taller than me.
The plesiosaur:
The pterosaur, Ornithocherius:
The sea turtle Archelon:
The shark, Spathobathis:
The shoreline, with Hesperonis the fishing bird:
The ammonites and the underwater cliff:
