Friday, June 1, 2012

The Tar Pits at La Brea


This illustration was inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits in downtown Los Angeles.  
Combined with the Paige Museum, the tar pits left an impression on me at a really young age... right when I was most fascinated by dinosaurs.

They say that for every mammoth who's remains were excavated from the natural asphalt, they found something like 2 saber-tooth cats, 4 dire wolves, and as many birds of prey.  It was a remarkably carnivorous environment during the last ice age, which made for a really fun drawing.

This is a 24x12 pen on claybord, with a bit of greyscale shading added in photoshop.  I've been working to add a bit of limited palette coloring/shading on top of my pen and ink drawings for some added depth and control over the values.  This one is still super monochromatic, but I expect some more color will be leaking into my illustrations very soon.



2 comments:

  1. I don't know see how this ties in with the theme 'hurry', but hey, its a cool pic anyway. Look at that toothy cat - wouldn't want to bump into it in a dark prehistoric alley.

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  2. Thanks Richard! Great prehistoric work, yourself! I imagine there was quite a bit of hurrying at the time... "hurry before you sink!", "hurry and eat it before it sinks!", "hurry and fight off the vulture before it eats the carcass!" ... and so on and so forth. Probably should have mentioned that for illustration friday sake. Cheers!

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