There just hasn't been any time or opportunity to get out collecting in the last while, and summer is winding down. And, without much material to prep, that leaves me taking up the pencils. This one doesn't look as impressive as my usual output as it has a kind of cartoonish appearance. However, that could also be on account of the lighting. It is always a challenge to photograph pencil drawings. In person, this drawing is a bit darker as opposed to washed out as it appears here. This took me a ridiculously long time to complete despite the apparent simplicity of the body plan. When drawing darker trilobites, one of the unavoidable issues is how repeated cycles of layering and blending removes the tooth from the page, making any subsequent work nearly impossible. A Fossil Forum member suggested I give drawing a Tumido a try. Having never drawn a crab before, I thought I'd give it a go. I initially had a Dalmanites limulurus lined up for drawing, but the crab butted in. I still do plan on returning to the trilobites in the next while.
But each one is now a huge time commitment. What used to take two hours now spans 12+ hours over a few days as attention to detail and quality of rendering require a much longer stretch of time. Hopefully the results speak for themselves. Once I finish a drawing, it doesn't go up on a wall or anything -- I just stick in a plastic sleeve and park it in a three ring binder. I am hoping to get them all scanned, printed, and bound once I have a sizeable number of drawings. But, in all honesty, I really need to get out and break some rock. This collecting season has been pretty light, and I worry I won't have enough material for the winter!! Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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