THIS BLOG HAS BEEN RETIRED

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN RETIRED. I'm still going to be keeping it up here, though-- there's some pretty cool old stuff on it. That said, if you want to keep up to date with me, please go to www.georgeoconnorbooks.com.
Showing posts with label old bones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label old bones. Show all posts

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Old Bones mega post!

Yesterday a bunch of my studiomates ( Simon Fraser, Becky Cloonan, Tim Hamilton and Robin Ha) and I made a trek to the Museum of Natural History to check out their new Sauropod exhibit (along with pretty much every family in NYC with a kid under 8 years old-- gotta remember about spring break next time). The Sauropod exhibit was pretty cool, but it can't hold a candle to the permanent fossil collection, and we all made many cool drawings.

Here's some of my faves:




Because it was so crowded, we spent a lot of time in the less crowded mammal rooms, or as I like to call them, "failasauruses". This is the skull of a mammal-like reptile called Moschops, which is, like, the best name ever. Becky and I kept saying "Moschops!" all day after. Go on, give it  a try: Moschops!


Another mammal-like reptile, the Dimetrodon.  These are the guys with the big fins on their backs.


Another fun one to say: Glyptodont! These were huge armored mammals, like if a beaver and a turtle had a baby. That's armor plating on its skull, not a hair piece.


Becky thought it would be fun if we tried to picture the glyptodont with flesh on it. Mine looks like a lazy sheep. I hope to god she puts up hers because it was disgusting.

A Brontetherium, king of a huge rhino on steroids. I drew this because the skull had compressed strangely during fossilization and it looks like he's going "aduh!". Things that go "aduh!" are awesome.


After seeing the sauropod exhibit I decided to funnel some of new-found appreciation for them into this drawing of the Apatosaurus (the dinosaur formerly known as Brontosaurus). The neck vertebra a re really quite beautiful. I had to finally abandon this drawing because people were walking in front of me and I kept losing count of which vertebra I was on.


Allosaurus may not get the press of T-Rex, but dinosaur connoisseurs know that this is the cooler carnivore. Just look at the cool sweeping lines in its skull. Becky compared it to drawing a sports car, and she was totally right.


My favorite dino, Triceratops. So much so that when everyone else left (or was swept away by a crowd of 6-year old like Tim was) I stayed behind to behind to draw this. If I had a triceratops... you'd all pay.


I also drew this picture of a Styracosaurus, a spikier but smaller cousin of Triceratops.


Finally, because I'm so HARDCORE! I joined Simon at Jack Demseys in Manhattan for the Big City Drink and Draw, where we drank and drew.  I borrowed Simon's marker to draw this picture of our extremely muscular model beating the hell out of a bar chair.

All in all, a rich, full day!

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Friday, September 10, 2010

Warm up: Dinosaurs!

I got to choose the topic for today's warm-up sketch, and in honor of Simon Fraser joining us yesterday (not to mention my own love for prehistoric beasties) I chose dinosaurs. Here's Simon Fraser's:



Fellow Hypothetical Islander Joe Infurnari entered the fray today with his frankly adorable Uniceralope.



The mighty Tim Hamilton drew his first with his morning coffee, before he even arrived at the studio...



Natalie Kim
, who unless I somehow missed her didn't even come in to the studio today proved herself a champ by warming up remotely with her insecure dino.



And finally mine, with my rare wide-screen Tritelevisitops.


Simon rightly asked me why my Tritelevisitops is so knock-kneed-- I didn't know at the time, but now I realize it's because prehistoric tv's were so damned heavy. The technology just wasn't really there yet, you know?

Monday, November 3, 2008

Modern Fossil

Biking down the west side with the lovely Arta after our recent dino-drawing expedition, we came across this rotted hulk off the shoreline:



Hard to imagine what it was originally for. Shipping, obviously, but what exactly? A nice counterpoint to a day of drawing old bones.

Friday, October 31, 2008

The King

The final of my Natural History sketches...



Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

That terrible claw...

I was going to give the old bones a rest today and show off some nice, new finished pages from Zeus, but Blogger's uploading the colors of the jpegs all strangely and I didn't have the time to figure what was up. Later for that, I guess...

Feast your eyes instead on some sketches of deinonychus, the Jurassic Park stand-in of the cooler-sounding-named velociraptor, and its famous vicious foot claw.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Allosaurus

Another sketch from the AMNH. The kids may love velociraptor, and tyrannosaurus gets all the chicks, but my favorite predatory dinosaur is allosaurus. It wasn't the biggest, or the fastest, but to my mind, it was the most balanced and, frankly, cool carnivore. Not some lumbering, scavenging behemoth, but no glorified chicken either. This thing would take down huge freakin' sauropods for its dinner. Hardcore.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Old three-horned face...

A few weeks back I had a fierce hunkering to draw some old bones come over me. I made a trek to the American Museum of Natural History with the lovely and talented Artamis, as well as fellow dino-phile Mr. Simon Fraser to ease the gnawing at my soul.

Below you'll find one of the pieces of fruit from this expedition. Triceratops horridus, surely the coolest dino ever to exist. Anyone who disagrees is simply mistaken.