This year my niece requested a painting of dinosaurs for her birthday She absolutely loves dinosaurs and has a large collection of figurines of every kind of imaginable. As we talked, she mentioned wanting a Triceratops, an Ankylosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus in the image. After researching these dinosaurs, I realized that the Tyrannosaurus naturally wanted to eat the other two dinosaurs she had chosen. How could I make a realistic illustration while not depicting them fighting or eating one another? A violent image was not what I had in mind for my young niece. The final image depicts the moments before the fight would have taken place. The Ankylosaurus is down by the drinking hole and the Tyrannosaurus is walking through the image before noticing the Triceratops in front of it.
In doing the painting I researched other people’s drawings of dinosaurs and historically what how these types of dinosaurs looked. I found myself in the toy section, looking at all the different dinosaurs using my phone to capture the different angles of each dinosaur. While my model subjects were brightly colored, I stayed to more natural colors for the dinosaurs in my painting.
After sketching the drawing, I used a variety of bright greens, blues, and browns to shade the image and make the image seem a little bit more cheerful. Most images of dinosaurs are dark and ominous; I tend to use brighter colors when I use watercolors. I used acrylic ink and a small speedball calligraphy pen tip to outline everything in the scene. Unlike most drawing inks the acrylic ink doesn’t bleed over the paper.