Skulls Unlimited on National Geographic

The National Geographic Channel Website has a short video (apparently an excerpt from a series called Taboo) featuring the folks at Skulls Unlimited (I'd almost consider moving to the US of I could get a job there). This is not for the squeamish, so if you're bothered by decomposition, severed human heads, or dead things, don't watch.



I've never tried to embed a video before, so if this doesn't work, you can pop over to Nat Geog and watch it there.

Skeleton of the Dodo

Here's a shot of something in progress: it's a sketch for one of the illustrations in The Vanishing Bestiary (which I mentioned last post, though I may not have called it by its title).

Due to the assortment of reference photos and illustrations I was using, many of the them either very old, or rather low-res, or at a bad angle, there are some details I had to fudge a little and some that aren't as, well, detailed as I'd like. Ultimately, this will be a lino print, which won't hold s much detail as a drawing anyway, so it probably won't matter. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind finishing this as a drawing, too, and maybe even doing a non-fine-print version of The Vanishing Bestiary.

I am the Skeleton in my Closet

That post title doesn't really mean anything, I just thought it sounded amusing. I haven't got a proper post today, except to say I'm not actually dead and I am planning to start posting regularly again. For one thing, I've been doing some reading towards eventually getting back into working on revising and adding illustrations to my (now rather venerable) undergrad honours thesis on North American canid bones in archaeology. I even have access to most of a coyote skeleton to help me fill in some of the carpals and tarsals that were missing from the specimens I used to make the original illustrations. And I have a few more books to refer to so I can add species I wasn't able to cover before.

A second little update tidbit: I've started working (well, so far just in my head) on a bestiary that will be illustrated with skeletons. It'll be a fine-press, hand-printed and hand-bound thing and I hope to get started on a test illustration this weekend. You can read more about that on my art/writing/living in the woods blog Anagram for Ink.

Other than that, I am full of ideas and projects and things-to-do. I have a few more great resources to blog about and link, some books to review, and I really want to do some drawings of raven bones. In other words, I'm too busy for my own good.