This recently discovered croc lived in Africa and was a contemporary of the dinosaurs. The painting is in oil over a pencil drawing.This little maquette out of Sculpey helped me understand the form better.
I painted the maquette with acrylic and lit it from the left before photographing it with a digital camera. What I’m looking for in a maquette are the unexpected nuances of light and form, such as the cast shadows from the long teeth.
Here are the initial sketches presented to the editors, drawn with water-soluble colored pencils. The editors chose the closed-mouth variation, which hasn’t been illustrated as often before.Ranger Rick magazine
Previous RR paleoillustrations on GurneyJourney
