drawing dinosaurs

…and other prehistoric beasties

Whenever things get complicated, I retreat into the warmth and cosiness of geological time: it’s helped me through some difficult periods in my life. Normally I’d wallow in the delights and riches of the natural world, but at the moment it all feels very precarious and my eco-anxiety is bubbling up to the surface on a regular basis.

So, in between revamping my birdwatching logbooks for a 2025 makeover, I have been enjoying some drawing and painting in my sketchbook of some marvellous animals from the last 500 million years or so of life on Earth.

I’ve been using a Lee J. Ames book and while I don’t exactly feel a sense of achievement about these drawings as I am basically following instructions, I do like them, and at the moment having somebody else take responsibility for the creative process feels necessary. I love filling my sketchbook pages, and it’s all good practise and penmanship, and I’ve been using a light grey and dark grey fineliner to do the outlines. The light grey is rather like a permanent 2H pencil mark which is handy and gives a bit of definition without too much shading. I added some gouache to the woolly mammoth and smilodon just because it was on my palette.