1. Hello World
Personal Introduction
As a child I was always glued to the T.V. when David Attenborough documentaries were on. I collected information on animals anywhere I could. Then, one fateful day in 1993 I was taken by my Dad to see Jurassic Park in the cinema. My head was stuck to the cinema seat in fear and amazement. In 1993 it was uncommon to see a realistic portrayal of a Dinosaur in such great detail as Stan Winston had created. The show Walking With Dinosaurs came a few years later. I took up drawing as a way to indulge in learning animal anatomy.
Background on Palaeoart
Palaeontolgists and artists have a symbiotic relationship when it comes to the affective reconstruction and communication of extinct life on earth. As an artform, palaeoart is quite unusual, as the primary goal is to convey accurately the form and function of subjects, of whom we have limited information. The goal of the palaeo artist is to obtain the most up to date interpretation of the fossil evidence, and to turn this information into an truthful visual representation. Most fossilised animals will not be found in a complete state, so here is often a necessity for inferrence of the missing pieces of the fossil puzzle. When looking at fossilised lifeforms, palaeontologists are able to infer forms, behaviours and environments by using comparative measurements to extant species as well as evidence in the geological record. These findings are discussed and documented in published papers, websites, blogs, interviews and books. Where there is no evidence for a physical feature, we can infer where possible and also wildly speculate where inference is not possible.
In films and other entertainment media, dinosaurs and other extinct lifeforms have often been misrepresented and embellished in the spirit of form-over-function. Cool trumps accuracy when the objective is to sell cinema tickets and merchandise. These misrepresentations stick fast in the collective unconscious and Wonkysaurus-Rex becomes accepted as canon (Here’s looking at you, Jurassic Park T-Rex). While I appreciate a cool stylised creature, I think the animals in their true form are beautiful, and a faithful reconstruction warrants time and effort. In the age of AI generated content flooding our feeds, paleoart is a beacon of the beauty in the truth of our natural world.
I really like Mark Witton’s description of palaeoart as a “hypothesis", a visual almagamation made up of the known facts as well as inferred and imagined gap fillers. In this video he conveys the importance of accuracy in palaeoart. He goes in to detail in this video on the importance of accuracy.
In the next blog post, I will go in to detail on my project and my projected pipeline.
