Azhdarchid - Tumblr Posts
Big pelican
Aerotitan sudamericanus, an Azhdarchid from the Late Cretaceous with a wingspan of around 5 metres. It was maneuverable both in air and on land, stalking and snapping fish, frogs, lizards, birds and small mammals with it's beak. They are the only known Azhdarchid from South America so far.
Someone had a nice snack! First time trying to draw realistic blood in digital..Not very happy with it but I hope I get better. Currently I'm experimenting with art styles and trying to find what fits me more. I'll be glad to recieve any critique or advices! The colours were based on Swan geese.
tag yourself, which freaky pterosaur are you?
yeah i like these fucked up guys
Cretaceous Characters - Quetzalcoatlus meets a sub-adult triceratops. Just a silly paleoart cartoon thing of mine.
Birds (and azhdarchids) are jerks :p
(Also, that swag!)
Prehistoric Planet finally gives us the True Rival to the Tyrant Lizard King and it’s NOT a Dinosaur.
The garrulous Slagzogg
My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge from @maniculum
A little rough this week, but wanted to get it out there (perfect is the enemy of good :p).
Jinhao shark fountain pen with fine, hooded nib, with Monteverde Raven Noir ink, over initial 5.6mm HB pencil sketch.
Process and resoning notes below the cut...
"The Slagzogg marks the watches of the night by its constant cry. No other creature picks up the scent of man as it does. There are two kinds of Slagzoggs, domestic and wild. Wild Slagzoggs fly high, in a an orderly fashion, signifying those who, far away from earthly things, preserve a rule of virtuous conduct. Domestic Slagzoggs live together in villages, they cackle together all the time and rend each other with their beaks; they signify those who, although they like conventual life, nevertheless find time to gossip and slander. All wild Slagzoggs are grey in colour; I have not seen any that were of mixed colour or white. But among domestic Slagzoggs, there are not only grey but variegated and white ones. Wild Slagzoggs are the colour of ashes, that is to say, those who keep apart from this world wear the modest garb of penitence."
Okay, we know they fly. We know they have beaks. Hence, it's pretty obvious what kind of creature this is...
A pterosaur! Er... Well, there's no mention of feathers (which is probably reasonable...), perhaps I'm just tickled by the thought of medieval domesticated pterosaurs? I probably spent way too much time trying to draw a wattle fence, too. We have a farmer feeding her flock of domesticated miniature azhdarchid pterosaurs, while a few wild slagzoggs fly high overhead, looking down on their cousins below.
I went with azhdarchid pterosaurs since I felt that would be more visually distictive, and fit better in the picture given their more upright and distinctive method of locomotion on the ground. I also love the idea of a slagzogg 'village' cackling (like the one spreading its wings on top of the fence), clacking beaks, preening themselves, and generally making noise!
We also know that 'no other creature picks up the scent of man' as well as the slagzogg... We do know at this point that the bestiary authors love their superlatives almost as much as Pokedex descriptions, but we have no reason to doubt it. So, looking at modern archosaurs with a great sense of smell... Apparently, crocodiles actually have a fairly good sense of smell, but we're looking at birds to work out how best to represent this in a creature with a beak. Now kiwis have nostrils at the end of the beak, vultures also have a great sense of smell (though they completely slipped my mind until I was most of the way through), which left me with petrels... Petrels are diving seabirds with a distinctive 'tubenose' (their nostrils form a tubular nasal passage atop the beak), and use their sense of smell to detect prey (and their colonies) at sea. It's definitely a distinctive look!
What do they use their great sense of smell for (apart from identifying their keepers, one assumes)? Maybe these are truffle hunting pterosaurs? ;)
Actually, my first thought on reading the description was the dog vultures from the Judge Dredd comics (unfortunately I can't find any pictures online), until I re-read the description and noticed the reference to beaks!
This all raises an interesting question about how I (we? I don't want to assume too much) approach these challenges.
I feel like most of the time, I'm trying very hard to approach the prompts with a completely open mind; in many ways, a lot of the fun of these challenges is seeing what designs we come up with compared to the bestiary illustrators, given the same prompts.
Occasionally I'll have a pretty good idea what the creature is meant to be, in which case I will sometimes exercise a form of 'malicious compliance' where I'm either sticking as closely as possible to the description, or more rarely pursuing a parallel direction that I know is not the 'correct' one, in order to avoid drawing anything too close to the animal I believe the prompt is referencing.
Most rarely, I just have a cool idea from the prompt (like the Blisheag) and head off in that direction instead.
Guess which one this is :D
So what I'm also learning here is that I need more practice drawing humans, and drawing pterosaurs!
As an aside, this week I discovered this site;
It's basically a giant repository of links to various images and sites relating to medieval life and culture (so for example, I looked up the links for straw hats to get some medieval straw hat references this week...). There's so many links in here that some of them will inevitably have moved or expired, but it's potentially a really good source of references! I was able to find this image (partway through drafting the drawing) that I ended up taking heavy influence from;
I have a finally have a banner!
On this banner we have some of my favourite prehistoric animals:
Microraptor, Tanystropheus, Spinosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Confuciusornis, Sinosauropterix, Dreadnoughtus, Yi qi, tapejara and cryodrakon.
IM SO BLOODY EXITED FOR PREHISTORIC PLANET 2!
Also gotta add if this is hatzegopteryx like i think it is does this mean we could get a hateg island episode??!
That azhdarchid from my banner but in full body! I think when i designed it it was based of hatzegopteryx.
EDIT: JUST REALIZED THE WINGS ARE FUCKED, WILL CHANGE D:
Happy pterosaur Tuesday! Here's a pterrible big boi
![Anutha Azhdarchid Doodle [honk]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/62112ed5b2d29add40b2b02f2d4d1154/01392b0d82e3214e-ca/s500x750/b1d4133ec2186dd0bdfda78d3ac4b9ac1f55337e.png)