So happy to finally show off my final piece for the Tome of Pacts zine I feature in.
This is Hagne, the Herald of Rot, and faithful servant to her Patron, Cicardia. Her look was inspired by several things -- death masks, pomegranates, worn bronze, flies and centipedes. The butterflies she carries feed on death and decay. Hagne herself felt the cold embrace of the grave, but was blessed to find herself given another chance. She will not fail.
I am so honored to have been a part of this project, and this is one of my favorite pieces to date. I hope you guys enjoy it as well. :)
A lineup of Cambrian critters at the Naturkunde Museum Stuttgart. If you can’t see most of them: they’re in the glass display at the bottom, with a moveable magnifying glass provided. And then there’s Anomalocaris.
Thanks to the timeline on my walls that I've been trying to fill in with my art, I have now reached the point where I've done paleoart for every single period of the Phanerozoic, plus the Ediacaran and Cryogenian! That is to say, every period of the last 700 million years. So with that milestone, I thought it'd be fun to go through those periods in order and show off one paleoart of mine for each!
Cryogenian
In the Cryogenian, the Earth completely froze over. Twice! Life wasn't much to look at yet, but I enjoyed drawing what our planet might have looked like at the time. The girdle of lakes at the left is the equator, which may have had ice-free patches.
Ediacaran
When the ice retreated, animals first began to blossom into their endless forms most beautiful. Ediacaran life was strange and quite unlike the creatures that would come later, but it was nonetheless an incredibly important chapter in life's history. Here we see the Ediacaran weirdos washing up on shore after a storm.
Cambrian
The Cambrian explosion brought much more recognisable creatures. But one thing that's easy to miss is that they were all tiny! All of them? No, Anomalocaris was, with a length of about 40 cm, the dragon of the Cambrian.
Ordovician
Life continued to diversify in the Ordovician, and among this diversity were the cephalopods. They produced the largest animals yet to exist, the orthocones, who hung vertically in the water column and decended upon their prey like a claw game.
Silurian
Although fungi and bacteria had already made forays onto the land deep in the past, things began to get busier there in the Silurian. But these horseshoe crabs, and their larger cousins the sea scorpions, have not come to the shore to stay, but to mate and lay eggs. Unfortunately for the horseshoe crabs, they have come to the very same shore.
Devonian
Our own vertebrate ancestors, like Tiktaalik, were pretty late to the party, only taking their first steps on land in the late Devonian. That's no knock against them - there was plenty to do underwater! This Tiktaalik is busy guarding his eggs while his mate is busy hunting, for example. Who has time to step on land?
Carboniferous
The end of the Carboniferous saw some quite large bugs, like these two Mazothairos chasing off an interloping Meganeura. They're representatives of a pretty interesting group of basal insects called the Palaeodictyoptera, who have a set of weird little extra wings on their thorax.
Permian
Among the many fantastic creatures of the Permian were our own cousins, the synapsids, like these lovey-dovey Moschops. As you can see, this picture and the previous one are done in coloured pencils instead of watercolour, because they're the oldest images I'm including in this post. I only very rarely used watercolours before this year. I think it means I should do some more Permian art, it's such a cool and underexposed period.
Triassic
One mass extinction later, the archosaurs are diversifying all over Triassic Pangaea. Here we have the three main groups of them: Paratypothorax, a pseudosuchian in the background; Peteinosaurus, a pterosaur on top of the cliff; and Procompsognathus, a dinosaur climbing the cliff.
Jurassic
I had three different option for Jurassic paleoart to showcase, so I picked the most experimental one. These backlit insects are not butterflies, but kalligrammatids, a group of large-winged neuroptera, some of which even mimicked maniraptoran dinosaurs like this iridescent Caihong with their patterns.
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous featured some of life's most gorgeous crescendos of diversity, like the Yixian formation, where a Psitaccosaurus wants to visit the favourite tree of a group of Sinosauropteryxes, who are having none of it. This is still one of my favourite pieces I've ever drawn.
Paleogene
The Paleogene featured some of the highest global temperatures of all time, leading to tropical climates all over the planet, including at this lake in what will one day be Messel, Germany. Darwinius, a close cousin to our own ancestors, is having a staredown with the lizard Geiseltaliellus.
Neogene
The world turned colder and dryer in the Neogene, leading to the spread of large grasslands, like these South American ones. Phorusracos, a large terror bird, has caught a Thoatherium on the edge of the forest they both live in. South America was an isolated continent for the duration of the Neogene, leading to a quite unique fauna.
Quaternary
The Quaternary, our current period, is marked by the cycle of ice ages regularly freezing the northern hemisphere. But even during the ice ages, spring would come to the mammoth steppes, and these steppe mammoths are happy to celebrate its coming with a bath in the river.
for the brujitos ama thingy: what is everyone's (or just as many characters as you would like to answer with) favourite and/or least favourite monster or supernatural creature?
Anita Luciano also known as Cien Pies (the centipede) is a resident of Santuario. She’s been there for such a long time the boys know her since childhood, so they care about her like family. She’s a gentle spirit and often is found looking after every other soul in the house.
"He watched Bilbo from the doorway, still unnoticed by his host, and felt a little of his annoyance fade at the sight. He was humming merrily to himself, standing over the hob and frying a pan of eggs, the early morning sunlight streaming in through the window and catching the gold and copper in his hair. His small hands were delicate, but deft as he cooked with practised ease, and Thorin couldn't help but notice how radiant Bilbo looked. There had been a time when he had been deeply concerned about how small the Hobbit had grown on their journey, and to see him now filling his clothes better, looking round and soft again as he ought, filled Thorin with a quiet sense of relief."
A series of scenes, drabbles, and shorts in the reshirement setting for Bagginshield-tober, as organised by the lovely @smolestboop !
Ribbon teleports in a slashes Misdeed with his scissors.
@2-b-frank
"STAY AWAY FROM MY FUCKING HUSBAND"
He just laughed as he bled. Cockroaches skittering out of the open wound.
His Frank watched, wanting to step in but knowing Misdeed wouldn't like that.
In a dense Sequoia forest where the darkness is broken by only a single solarbeam, a Caihong curiously inspects a Kalligrammatid, seeing a face not unlike its own staring back from the strange insect's transparent wings.
A bit of an experimental piece. Although kalligrammatids superficially look like butterflies, these Jurassic insects are in fact lacewings, entirely unrelated to butterflies! One of the differences this implies is that their gorgeously patterned wings were in fact transparent. This gave me the idea to use some extreme backlighting to really show them off, as well as the gloriously iridescent Caihong's feathers. This watercolour, for which I gratefully used this fantastic guide to restoring Kalligrammatids, features Affinigramma myrioneura; Kallihemerobius almacellus, aciedentatus, and feroculus; Kalligramma circularia, and the Maniraptoran-mimic Kalligramma brachyrhyncha.
did you know that praying mantises have 5 eyes? the main two eyes are used for detecting movement and depth while the 5 little eyes sit in the middle of the forehead (between the antennae) and are used for detecting light.
the best part is, to test mantis eyes and determine that they can actually see things in 3d scientists put little 3d glasses on mantises and they look adorable.
Thank you for the fun fact! I am learning a lot about praying mantises because of this au lol