Vintage Paleoart: Rien Poortvliet's Journey to the Ice Age

Many of us probably know Rien Poortvliet for Gnomes, which is an undisputed fantasy/fantasy illustration/speculative biology(?)/well, spec-bio-adjacent masterpiece.  But he had many other beautiful books to his credit and among them, surprisingly, is a work of Paleoart:  

Journey to the Ice Age, published in English in 1994 by Harry N. Abrams is every bit as beautifully crafted as Gnomes and once again, Poortvliet's love and careful observation of the natural world shines through.  The paintings are based on his thoughts wandering while sitting in his hunting hide.  

A highlight of the book is it's focus on prehistoric people.  I'm especially fond of the series of paintings speculating that the first human to ride a wild horse was either very brave, very stupid, or some combination thereof and also somebody triple-dog-dared them.

And now, the mammoths.  Poortvliet had a few mammoth specimens on hand, like hair and a vertebrae; tactile reminders of the beasts, so they are never far from his mind.  This is a very beautiful book and I'm happy to have stumbled upon it.

Tove Jansson and The Moomins

 Here is a lovely three-part documentary on author/illustrator Tove Jansson and her wonderful and enduring "Moomins" series.  I wasn't familiar with much beyond the Anime series and the comic strip, so a lot of this was new to me and I'm glad to have learned it.

 

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Art of the Day

Did you know that Nuthatches "puff up" when angry?  Because I just saw this behavior for the first time and I'm delighted beyond words.

The Six Fanart Challenge!

This was a lot of fun! First, the Twitter thread that started the whole thing:

I’m going to do it why not? #SixFanarts pic.twitter.com/6uPwnh1Siy

— Trish (@Babbletrish) April 8, 2020

I eventually did use the grid thing for the cleaned up color version:

 


And now, closeups of each color version!

The Faebruary Gallery!

Whew, I did another month's worth of daily art challenges!  And I made my first Twitter Moment to share them.  Enjoy:

#Faebruary 2018!


I'll be honest, part of why I turned this into a Moment is to see how one looks like here.  Storify is going down in May and I need a new home for my Tweetmentaries after all...

Smaugust Finale!

By request, a Lion-Dragon having fun on the beach:



Toothless from memory:



And a bonus Meatlug (also from memory):



Steven Magnet!



And finally, since the theme for Folklore Thursday was Pirates, here's Leon Lyngbakr and Captain Stupidbeard about to have a real bad day.



Whew!

Smaugust Week Four!

So... I needed to draw something cute with dragons after the latest "Game of Thrones". So here's Axew dancing to her favorite song. (It is, of course, Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk".)



And speaking of "Game of Thrones", have some massive spoilers (and a "Die Hard" quote.)



If you like cats and dragons, let me introduce you to the strange Alpine mythical beast, the Tatzelwurm:



A little dragon with a fabulous array of headgear:



The Folklore Thursday theme was Fairies, so here's a Pyrallis. These tiny Fairy-Dragons from Cyprus are attracted to light (indeed, they're said to live inside forges) and are so small, they look like dancing sparks.



A friend on Facebook asked me to draw Falcor from memory, so here he is:



And finally, here's an Oroboros who has just watched this and is just so happy to be trendy again.



Five more days of dragons left!

Smaugust Week Three!

Guys, I really like drawing dragons!



My sister called this scene in the latest episode of "Game of Thrones" the "Well, if my cat lets you do that, I guess you're okay" moment.  But I couldn't help but think it could've gone bad really quick...



I did not care much for "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (more like "Wizard Politics and How to be Bored by Them"), but damn did it have some nice-looking dragons.  Here's an Occamy guarding her silver egg and wondering if it's still fanart if you did not care for the movie?



And talk about crap endings.  Seriously, where would those idiot Wizards be without this sweetie?



I looked at some of the old Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks for inspiration. Is it me or does the Red Dragon on the old Monster Manual look like a big goofball?



For Folklore Thursday, I painted an Eclipse Dragon who immediately regrets so many things:



Finally, here's the dragon drawn on the last page of a Sketchbook:



...and the dragon drawn on the first page of a new Sketchbook:



And here they are together! 😄

Smaugust Week One... and Two

Smaugust!  The month of daily dragons!  This is the first of what will hopefully be a weekly wrap-up of all the dragons I drew in the past week.



Got to wondering, if the "Game Of Thrones" dragons have only the two legs and two wings, why aren't they quad-launchers?!?!?

And thinking about it and getting a little fed up with all the wyvern-dragons in pop culture lately, anatomically believable flying tetrapods that are magical and breathe fire, I drew Leggy here.



And here's Curly.



And Puffy.



And Giant. I like to think she's bright bright orange and periodically has to let the forest grow over her to blend in.

Then a lot of things happened over the past weekend and I did a catch-up day of drawing Dragon Pokemon from memory:



Dragonite



Salamence



Flygon



Hydreigon



And a bonus Goomy!



The theme for Folklore Thursday this week was creatures of the forest.  A quick bit of research led me to the sad tale of the Dragon of Mordiford, pictured here before things rapidly go south.  (Note that in some versions of the tale, the dragon is described as a Wyvern [quad-launcher or not is never specified], so I gave this guy a few Wyverny features like fangs and a tail-blade while keeping him a proper dragon.  6+ limbs, damn it.  Heck, in other versions of the story, the dragon has multiple pairs of wings!)



And finally, some fanart of a special boy from "Shin Godzilla", which I watched with my dad.  One or both of us might have sworn out loud when this thing first appeared. 

See you next week!