“Stegosaurus In Situ”, 7×9 linocut, available at my Etsy store.
Here’s the most recent dinosaur print. It’s a stegosaurus, probably one of the most iconic dinosaurs. This dinosaur is so familiar I wanted to do something a little different, and represent it as an articulated specimen found in place. I used a fair amount of artistic license, as it’s unusual to find such a large dinosaur so perfectly laid out, but I like that it’s not a perfect reconstruction like you might see in a museum.
Here’s the second of my dinosaur series of block prints. It’s not actually a dinosaur, but a marine reptile commonly called a Plesiosaur. These creatures ranged in size from 3 to 12 meters in length, and had amazingly long necks as well as four paddle-shaped limbs.
One of the reasons I started doing these prints is because I felt a sort of kinship with fossil preparators carefully carving away the rock to reveal the specimen. The process of carving to reveal an image really captured my imagination and I was particularly interested in portraying skeletons as they appear on site, rather than the fully articulated and assembled pictures we usually see. This image is more of a compromise, mostly because the neck was so long it had to be curled around to fit on the paper.
I did two different versions of the print, one without a background color, and one with a background that I printed with a rather beat up piece of wood to give some texture. They’re available at my Etsy store.
“Camarasaurus” linocut block print on Rives BFK. 8×10 image. Available at my Etsy shop.
Anyone who looks over my bookshelf will see that evolution is a central topic of my reading. Recently, I’ve gotten really interested in dinosaurs, particularly the new feathered fossils coming from China linking birds to dinosaurs. Somehow I missed that geeky kid stage of obsessing over dinosaurs, and I’m making up for lost time. This is what I hope is the first of a series of fossil prints. I’ve compiled a lot of source materials, and now I get to play with my new press!
