
Sordes
Sordes was a pterosaur from the late Jurassic Kazakhstan. Specimens include soft tissue such as it's wing membranes and fur, so we have a comparitively good idea of what it looked like.
Good evening, I am John Conway, and I make art of very old things, and of new things I have made up. I have a podcast about animals with Darren Naish, and have written and illustated two books with Darren and C.M. Kosemen. My art is funded by people like you through Patreon.
You can read more about me here.
Sordes was a pterosaur from the late Jurassic Kazakhstan. Specimens include soft tissue such as it's wing membranes and fur, so we have a comparitively good idea of what it looked like.
Caviramus was a pterosaur from the Late Triassic of Switzerland. It had a rather special nose.
Oh look, it's my old friend Molly, with a body for a face and face for a body!
Anchisaurus fighting in the Early Jurassic.
Dinodontosaurus was a dicynodont therapsid (mammal-line tetrapod) from the Mid- to Late Triassic.
I don't know a lot about these animals, so there may be errors.
A body. Of a theropod - probably an allosaur of some sort.
This is the forth painting in a series, where I am attempting to avoid deliberately posing and placing the animals in a composition. Usually we compose animals in scenes for aesthetic reasons, and avoid confusing angles or poses. Obscuring parts (particularly heads and eyes) is nearly always avoided. What if I try to purge those rules? Will a new sort of naturalism develop?
Abelisaurus was a meat-eater from the Late Cretaceous of South America.
Camarasaurus was a chunky sauropod from the Late Jurassic of North America.
Mamenchisaurus was a VERY long-necked dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of China. Quite the looker, too.
A flock of Campylognathoides liasicus, some time in the Late Jurassic.
This is the third painting in a series, where I am attempting to avoid deliberately posing and placing the animals in a composition. Usually we compose animals in scenes for aesthetic reasons, and avoid confusing angles or poses. Obscuring parts (particularly heads and eyes) is nearly always avoided. What if I try to purge those rules? Will a new sort of naturalism develop?
Tapejara, a medium-sized pterosaur from the Cretaceous of South America –in a tree.
The Late Cretaceous pterosaur Pteranodon ingens, flying back home.
Supersaurus in a forest in the Late Jurassic.
This is the second painting in a series, where I am attempting to avoid deliberately posing and placing the animals in a composition. Usually we compose animals in scenes for aesthetic reasons, and avoid confusing angles or poses. Obscuring parts (particularly heads and eyes) is nearly always avoided. What if I try to purge those rules? Will a new sort of naturalism develop?
In this painting I closed my eyes as a moved the animals and trees from side to side. So they are (somewhat) randomly placed. However, it is derived from an uncompleted painting where the animals were posed without the idea of uncomposition in mind, so there's still elements of the process to work on.
Some dinosaurs and other animals by a river some time in the Jurassic.
This is the first painting in a series, where I am attempting to avoid deliberately posing and placing the animals in a composition. Usually we compose animals in scenes for aesthetic reasons, and avoid confusing angles or poses. Obscuring parts (particularly heads and eyes) is nearly always avoided. What if I try to purge those rules? Will a new sort of naturalism develop?
I don't feel like I really captured the whole spirit of uncomposition in this work - I tried without a randomising process. I tried just to clear my mind of compositional ideas, but obviously the whole sweep of the painting is highly composed.
Some say you should listen to your theropod; others your sauropod. Only one will eat you.
The fabulous fabrosaur checks out a burrow in Early Jurassic Lesotho.
A herd of Brachiosaurus altithorax, a Gargoyleosaurus parkpinorum and some pterosaurs in Late Jurassic North America, about 145 million years ago.
Some animals from the Hell Creek (which was more of a river back then) formation. Tyrannosaurus shows up and some Edmontosaurs and Triceratops run away. Well you would, wouldn't you.
Stylistically inspired by Ely Kish, as I often am.
Megalosaurus makes like a forest in Jurassic England.
Quetzalcoatlus northropi, possibly the biggest flying animal, launching. This reconstruction is fairly speculative, as Q. northropi is known mostly from a partial wing, so the missing bits (most of it) are base on the littel Quetz.