The Making of Amargasaurus

Alright so Prehistoric times makes calls for dinosaur art pieces to post in their magazine.  He does not pay but hey its free publication and I so do enjoy a little excuse to do some dino drawings from time to time.  Naturally when the call was for the ever so awesome looking Amargasaurus, I was all but to excited to start the work.  I did some serious research this time into my dinosaurs overall build and anatomy.  I checked out several skeleton reconstructions online and other artists interpretations.  I also checked out the muscle structure of both Giraffes and Elephants.  With this in mind I decided to go a bit of a different rout with the dino. First of all, I wanted two of them, secondly I wanted them to not be from a profile but looking at the view.  So I started with my sketch:
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I was pretty happy with the sketches, they showed nice perspective and detail in the sail features on the necks.  I then redrew the sketches onto a 20×30″ illustration board.  I masked off the dinosaurs and started with the sky and background:
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Now time for the Dinos!  I used references from Iguanas and Alligators for the skin and coloration.  Its amazing how well the iguana worked for this one!  Go ahead and look them up and you would see why!
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Then Finally, the finishing touches!  Adding a bit of airbrush to the sun, some sand and lighting effects, white highlights, all the fun stuff you get to do at the end.  The final result:
http://www.jamescskinner.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/rsz_amargasaurus1.jpg

What!? Who is this James Skinner?

Welcome to James Skinner’s artistic homepage of fanciful imagery.  A portal to all things artsy by me and of interest to me.

Currently I am a High School art teacher at Williston High School way up in the North lands of the country in North Dakota.  Since we have snow nine months out of the year here one tends to have time during our “winters” to work on art, and that is what I do.  If you are interested on this site you will find enough fantasy images that fulfill the passage of time over the winters of my beautiful state of North Dakota.

When I am not out shoveling the drive way or enjoying the few rays of sunshine of the summer, I am available to do illustration work, concept design, and other miscellaneous art endeavors.

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