OnlyScarcelyScaly

@onlyscarcelyscaly

29, Floridian, primarily a mapmaking and paleoanthropology artist. I got the same handle on Reddit, Tumblr, and Youtube, so go check those out to see my work in other formats : )

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OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· 12d

QRP with your most popular piece on bsky ~ (www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHZU...)

The thumbnail for my Youtube video showcasing the Centaur alien homeplanet's monthly surface appearance. The title reads "Centaur Alien Homeplanet: View of North and South Hemispheres - Centered on Tropic Latitude", and it occupies the center of the top half of the image, in mild orange text. The background involves the video's contents, this being two spheres nearly touching eachother and the edges of the frame, representing the north (on left) and south (on right) hemispheres of the planet, centered not on the poles but rather on a point roughly halfway between the equator and either pole (51 degrees north and south).

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Jul 10

(2/2) In addition to the low-res spin-around in the parent post, here are four somewhat crisper static images, the first of which is from the same angle as the fourth image from my *previous* update in April, so that they're easier to compare.

An image exported directly from Blender, with Little Foot (an Australopithecus) staring straight ahead and slightly up into the camera. There are strong shadows at the oblique parts of the right side of her face, and a bluish-grey reflective light runs faintly along the right-hand outlines of her trapezius and her braincase. Her forehead and much of her upper face is creased, with pads of thick skin on her upper cheeks, and a similar situation on a smaller scale is present above the corners of her mouth. Her nose is wide and mostly flat, but the ball of her otherwise apelike nose protrudes a little bit. Her braincase is rather small but a little taller than most panins, and her lower face is robust. The inner corners of her eyes and the aforementioned cheek pads are pale, as are the outer corners of the mouth and the insides of her ears and nose, all with slightly different hues. Otherwise her skin is a dark, greyish brown, with a slightly rough texture.

Another image exported from Blender of the Hominin reconstruction, this time from a low angle a little bit to one side, so that she appears to gaze intently somewhere beyond the upper left corner. This model only features the head and neck, and so beyond her shoulders and collarbone there is only shallow, downward-pointing conical cylinder descending from that rough ring-shape. Since her eyes aren't as hidden by her browridge from this vantage point, we can see rich brown irises ringed by dark grey, against tan scleras. While there are dark shadows along the underside of the bust, beneath her chin, and along the side of her face which is mostly turned away from us, the rest of her face is well illuminated, with bright reflections in her eyes.

The sculpted reconstruction of Little Foot seen from her right and slightly below, such that we see her deeply shadowed right cheek and just barely see both of her eyes, pointed toward right-of-frame. The front of her face, seen from this oblique angle, catches the light strongly, while the corner of her mouth and part of her ear catch it more faintly. Here we can see how her lower face projects forward, with her nose laying mostly flat and a strong, rounded brow ridge above her eyes.

The final Blender image export of this post, this time viewing the bust from high above and slightly to one side, such that we see both of her ears but not her eyes. the front of her mouth and the vertical crease on her nosebridge point toward the bottom left corner. Although her actual eyes are hidden beneath her brow ridge, the lighter patches of skin on her eyesockets are visible.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Jul 10

Been a while, but I've made sporadic minor adjustments to my Blender reconstruction of Littlefoot these past few months, the most major one being all new eyes for her - which I'll make a little video on when I have a working mic again. Still plenty more to do with this one, a bit at a time (1/2)

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· May 23

Gheice! Gauzelings, even!

A horizontal photo taken at close range of some Canada geese swimming near the sandy shore of a lake. From left to right there is an adult preening its wingtips at the mouth of a channel eroded into the narrow sandy shore, a grey fluffy gosling about 2/3rds the size of the adult, another adult a couple feet further away from the shore, and another gosling the same size as the first. All have their chests facing left-of-frame so we see their left flanks, but the first adult has turned its head around and craned it far back towards the tips of its folded wings

A square-cropped photo of some more Canada geese further along the same shore of the artificial lake. This time there are 8 individuals, and from left of frame (most distant) to right of frame (nearest) they are: 3 adults in the water near the shoreline facing various directions, two goslings on the shore, one standing one sitting, an adult bodily facing right-of-frame but turning its head to look directly at me, a lone gosling cresting the top of the grassy embankment between myself and the previously described adult, and another adult goose in pose similar to the other adult, but standing just offshore with its hindquarters clear of the water's surface.

Another shot of the same geese previously described (minus the three adults in the water), from further along so that their stretch of shore is nearly parallel to the bottom of the frame. The goslings are still in the same positions, but the adults are now facing away from me, and because of my change in vantage point the embankment-cresting-gosling is now at the right edge of the photo. Perhaps 20 feet away in the background, the four individuals from the first attached photo swim out into the center of the lake, facing left, the two adults ahead and spaced apart slightly, and the goslings behind and closer together.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· May 15

I could keep fiddling with this for months and months if I don't stop myself, so here's me doing that; Rodhocetus is now finished, even without much of a skin pattern, but she and her background have since gained some coherence imo. That being said, here also are she and her background separated out

A digital painting of an underwater scene, with a strange aquatic mammal filling the frame from top-right to bottom-left, as it descends and turns its head to face us. We can see the underside of the ocean waves filtering in the bright pink of the sky, with the water darkening and desaturating through shades of teal toward the bottom of the frame. The protocetid has a rather short, smooth tail and large webbed feet kicking at the water toward right-of-frame, its smaller front limbs held close to its underside. Its head looks like a cross between a dolphin's and a seal's, with small dark eyes set wide on either side of its head, pupils horizontal and eyelids forming a continuous ring around each eye. There are upturned nostrils midway down its snout, and an open mouth with lip tissue hiding the top teeth and large pointy teeth and a short tongue visible in the bottom jaw. There are also short, downturned whiskers toward the end of the snout, but not at the very front. The creature has a solid pale dull skin color, but the light filtering through the waves gives it pink highlights and caustics (with a very faint rainbow effect) against its yellowy grey midtones and dark teal shadows.

A transparent png consisting of just the Rodhocetus, the background (*and* the sun rays that cut in front of her) having been removed. Compared to my previous update, the outline of the head is slightly less rounded and the folds around the bases of the forelimbs and hindlimbs are more hippo-like. Also the figure's outline is slightly blurred and grainy, no sharp edges here.

The background alone, without the Rodhocetus in the foreground. We're looking up obliquely at the underside of the ocean surface at sunset, getting filtered glimpses of a yellow and pink sky. As it extends toward the horizon it deepens into a mauve, then a dull dark brown, and the rest of the water continues through dark dull teal at about the vertical middle of the image to almost black toward the bottom. Rays of light filter down, almost coming to a point at the top edge, some of the closer ones curving a bit. Overall the image is a little blurry and grainy, but still discernible.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· May 13

For #Mermay, I submit for the public's consideration Thing of Questionable Qualification! From seven whole years ago!

A screenshot of a digital sculpture opened in SculptGl, seen from below and a bit to one side, being a marine-adapted humanoid swimming prone from right-of-frame to left, with a much smaller normal human standing on an invisible floor, his head positioned near the mermaid-like-thing's left shoulder. The marine-adapted-humanoid (m.a.h. henceforth) is pale, streamlined, and about 20 feet long from its small bulbous head to its large spoon-shaped feet. Its arms aren't too dissimilar to ours, if somewhat stiffer, and it has two separate legs which nonetheless operate as one unit, with fat deposits and minor membranes closing the gaps.

Another screenshot of the same sculpture, this time from behind and to the right of the m.a.h.'s flipper feet. The example regular human stands (on nothing) at the far end of this scene with his feet widely planted and a (in this artist's opinion) pretty nice bottom. The m.a.h.'s feet, meanwhile are habitually locked in place at their inner edges, together forming a large, spoon-like or spatula-like fluke. On the outer edges of the shins there are short, stiff ridges that continue down the ankles into the foot paddles. From this angle the m.a.h.'s head is hidden by the right shoulder, but we can see both hands, on the ends of arms held close to the flanks.

A view from above of the backs of the m.a.h.'s knees, shins, and flipper feet, with the thighs cropped out by the image's left edge. Under the skin we can make out a humanoid shape to the muscles and bones of the shins and ankles, but the overall silhouette is modified by a ridge/membrane on the inner edges of the ankles, closing the gap. The soles of the feet face upward, toward us, flaring out to the sides to create a wide paddle. From this angle the overall shape of the lower legs and feet resembles the top view of platypus's head, if with a somewhat wider and more angular bill.

A closeup of the m.a.h.'s head and shoulders (and the example human's head as well) seen at an oblique angle centered on the left eye (for both). The m.a.h.'s eyes are large, dark, very widely spaced *and* widely angled, and somewhat flat, beneath a wide, bulbous forehead and above a short but conical nose and a wide, thin-lipped mouth which extends upward and outward at the corners. There is a fatty bump at the top of the head extending from the greater mass of the neck and shoulders, which are not very mobile. The head faces forward even as the body is prone, as in most animals and unlike modern humans. There are only little dimples where the external ears would once have been.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· May 9

Minor update before I decide what skin patterns to give this thing: added short whiskers, a tongue, eyelids, fingernails, and caustics, and adjusted some elements that were already present

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· May 7

A work very much in-progress, of the mid-sized, Middle Eocene protocetid Rodhocetus pivoting in its dive to take a gander at us.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Apr 14

#PortfolioDay! Here's some physical ~and~ digital work, most from this past year and one from...11 years ago?

An approximately 6 inch tall clay sculpture of a mostly white dog, with a black nose, brown eyes, and faint brown spots on his ears and arms, seated on a slightly rounded, rich brown wooden platform. The dog's front paws face us and his back legs are partly hidden by his arms, and his head is slightly lifted and turned toward right-of-frame, though we can still see both his eyes and both of his floppy V-shaped ears. He is brightly lit by the sun coming in through a window, and sharp but ambiently-brightened shadows are cast leftward and downward from his muzzle, his arms, and his right ear.

A Blender export of my color-graded elevation map of Jay Eaton's Centaur alien homeplanet, wrapped around a globe with the north pole situated near the upper right and the equator curving around the lower left. This view centers the North-Eastern portion of the globe-spanning, ring-shaped Supercontinent, this being the part with the greatest land area, and so the dark blue oceans are somewhat marginalized by this vantage point. The coastal lowlands are a dull olive fringe around a greater expanse of yellow plains which graduate to orange at the higher elevations, and then the true highlands are sharply divided from the yellow-orange gradient in a dark bluish-brown, which then transitions through nut-brown to white at the highest peaks. These highlands form a mostly continuous strip across the landmass, snaking along the south coast of the isthmus in the lower left, then running northward, then continuing eastward and reaching their greatest width and height in this region. The landmass is very irregularly shaped, with various peninsulas, lobes, bays, isthmuses, capes, and subcontinents along its outline and archipelagos off its coasts.

A collage of three stages of my Blender-modelled reconstruction of Australopithecus fossil skull Stw 573 (a.k.a. Little Foot), these being the adjusted skull at left, the muscles, cartilage, and eyeballs wrapped around the skull at center, and a colored and textured skin mesh at right. While the "final" mesh at right is seen facing us directly and taking up much of the vertical space, the aforementioned muscle-bound and free-skull meshes are slightly smaller and ever so slightly rotated toward left of frame. Some of her features are ape-like, but human-like features are identifiable if you know what to look for. Her forehead and much of her upper face is creased, with pads of thick skin on her upper cheeks, and a similar situation on a smaller scale is present above the corners of her mouth. Her nose is wide and mostly flat, but the ball of her otherwise apelike nose protrudes a little bit. Her braincase is rather small but a little taller than most chimpanzees or bonobos, and her lower face is robust. The inner corners of her eyes and the aforementioned cheek pads are pale, as are the outer corners of the mouth and the insides of her ears and nose, all with slightly different hues. Otherwise her skin is a dark, greyish brown, with a slightly rough texture. Her eyes, looking slightly up at us, have dark grey scleras and rich brown irises.

My graphite drawing on white paper from 2015 titled "They Hop", depicting a group of surreal, one-legged creatures hopping down a curved hallway or alleyway, with no visible ceiling or sky, toward the viewer. Their main body is a hollow human head, whose face is split in half down the middle and hinges outwards, revealing an axle which the small singular leg is attached to, with its Poulaine-shoe foot, while the axle's outer bolts protrude from the head's upper temples. A white, leafless tree grows upward from the top of the head, with a vertical, front-facing gap just above the head's hinge. Within reach of the upper branches, there are alcoves on either side of the opening of the hallway/alleyway, on which rest two more examples of this kind of creature, one facing us, the other facing away. The one facing us has its eyes closed and its face split open the same way the hopping ones are, but its knee is bent such that the crescent-tipped foot is level with the chin, allowing the head to rest. Opposite it, the creature which faces away opens from the back, instead, its face presumably held together on the other side, and the leg appears to kneel, with the heel of the foot facing outward and the tip of the foot on the floor of the alcove.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Apr 10

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHZU... I think I can say that this particular video is complete now! Although this third and final phase of the commission is done, this is not the last you'll see of it, as I will *also* be sharing some of the numerous maps that went into this. Stay tuned for those!

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Apr 9

Went ahead and adapted my Paranthropus boisei skin to this little Australopithecus's anatomy. Almost done with the re-creasing the mesh and updating the color texture, but haven't even *touched* the bumpmap texture yet

Screenshot of a Hominin bust in Blender, with a material like a solid reddish-orange slightly shiny plastic. The Hominin, modeled after the Little Foot skull, faces left-of-frame, and we view it from slightly above such that we see the top of her head but can also still see some of the front of her neck. She is a member of genus Australopithecus, and so some of her features are ape-like, but human-like features are identifiable if you know what to look for. Her forehead and much of her upper face is creased, with pads of thick skin on her upper cheeks, and a similar situation on a smaller scale is present above the corners of her mouth. Her nose is wide and mostly flat, but the ball of her otherwise apelike nose protrudes a little bit. Her braincase is rather small but a little taller than most chimpanzees or bonobos, and her lower face is robust.

An image exported directly from one of Blender's cameras, situated at a fairly similar angle to that of the previous image. This time, we see the realistic skin texture applied, with lighting as well. The inner corners of her eyes and the aforementioned cheek pads are pale, as are the outer corners of the mouth and the insides of her ears and nose, all with slightly different hues. Otherwise her skin is a dark, greyish brown, with a slightly rough texture. From this angle there are very few strong shadows, since the camera is basically aligned with the light source, and there is a faint bluish reflective light across the back of her head and shoulders.

The final Blender image export of this post, this time with Little Foot staring straight ahead and slightly up into the camera. We can see how the inner part of her eye socket and the outer part of the cheek pad are strongly raised from the surrounding skin, with deep creases at the edges. Aside from her ears, from this angle the silhouette of her head is almost mirrored top-to-bottom, with the sides of her face forming a fairly straight upright line from her temples to her jawline. There are strong shadows at the oblique parts of the right side of her face, and now the reflective light runs faintly along the right-hand outlines of her trapezius and her braincase.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Apr 7

ah heck, why not, some Blender craniofacial musculature meshes for dearest Yihenaalbrin too

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Apr 6

Got myself a copy of the recent Little Foot skull scan from MorphoSource, and already have it symmetrized and all wrapped up with soft tissues in Blender : ) Both of those alterations are a little speculative (and maybe unfinished), but this life-restoration is off to a good start

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Mar 18

o o o o o u u u u g g g g g g g g g h

Screenshot of a Blender video editing workspace, with a File Browser sidebar on the left edge, the Sequencer along the bottom edge, and a frame from the video itself (frame 682 of 3000, specifically) taking up most of the viewport. The video (6000 by 3000 pixels) shows the Centaur Alien homeplanet's northern and southern hemispheres from a vantage point 51 degrees above and below the equator (on the left and right respectively) as the planet completes one rotation for each month. This frame takes place in June, and so the sun's reflection off the ocean in the northern hemisphere is perfectly centered, and in the Sequencer we can see that this is made up of two 120-frame chunks of footage, one for the north hemisphere view in Channel 7 and one in Channel 6 for the south hemisphere view. The sequencer is zoomed in somewhat, cutting off the beginning and end of the timeline, but we can see 16 more such chunks (8 pairs) for April thru December and, further ahead, some 10-frame chunks of video with large gaps between them. You'll all see what *those* correlate to eventually....

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Mar 8

Quote your portraits!

Blender model against a solid black background of the head and neck of the extinct hominid Paranthropus boisei. The bust is viewed from a low angle, looking up at the right cheek, while the hominids eyes are both visible gazing somewhere beyond the upper right corner. The figure has a wide neck, very wide and flat face, and a somewhat forward projecting mouth. The nose is wide and apelike, the eyes small beneath a heavy, wrinkled brow ridge, and there are thick pads of skin on the frontal faces of the cheeks and smaller pads at the corners of the mouth. Most of the skin is a dark, greyish brown, with lighter patches inside the ears and at the corners of the mouth, and the aforementioned cheek pads are a medium rust color.

A minimal-palette, digitally-painted portrait of the Ceratopsian dinosaur Pentaceratops, looming in the foreground and pointing its left brow horn at us by facing down and slightly to our left, cocking its head. Its prominent left cheek horn points right-of-frame and slightly upwards, while its opposite, also visible from this angle, points left and slightly down. The background is a flat dark green, which the post-cranial body fades into, while the nearer and better lit portions are a brighter butterscotch color, with strong shadows cast across its midface by the brow horns. all values in this piece are on a gradient between this darker green and brighter butterscotch, such that more medium tones appear olive. There is a thin crease extending backward from the nostril ending where the back of the bony nasal aperture would be, and while most of the skin hasn't been given a texture, there are faint outlines of scales on the very tall frill which are small, elongated, and somewhat rectangle shaped, arranged in parallel formation pointing toward the frill's edge.

Graphite sketch on printer paper depicting the head and right shoulder of a Neandertal, of ambiguous gender. From beneath a heavy, hairless browridge they look over their shoulder and slightly down their large nose at us. Their cheek-length hair is wavy and whispy, falling diagonally on either side of their head

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Mar 8

A preview of the now-finished product : ) This is the planet as of January, seen from 51 degrees above and below the equator, respectively, as it completes one rotation. There's plenty more where this came from, now it's just a matter of exporting the footage

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Feb 21

Monsters! A few of 'em! Old ones, these, two from 2015 and one from 2018

My acrylic painting "Hatching Bliss", on black construction paper, depicting a cluster of five...egg-creatures huddled on a cave floor, raising their blissful heads toward a beam of light emanating from above. Each is composed of a barrel-sized, brown-speckled white egg with parts of the shell missing from the tops and from a hole near the bottom, these giving way to yellow membranes from which emerge two white humanoid arms (from the top) and one white humanoid leg (from the bottom). The elbows, knees, hands, and feet (toe-less, instead smooth and shaped like a Poulaine shoe) are red, and the raised hands hold up beach-ball sized eggs which contain pale human heads revealed by the hole in each shell, with deep red eye sockets and beatific expressions.

My graphite drawing on white paper titled "They Hop", depicting a group of surreal, one-legged creatures hopping down a curved hallway or alleyway, with no visible ceiling or sky, toward the viewer. Their main body is a hollow human head, whose face is split in half down the middle and hinges outwards, revealing an axle which the small singular leg is attached to, with its Poulaine-shoe foot, while the axle's outer bolts protrude from the head's upper temples. A white, leafless tree grows upward from the top of the head, with a vertical, front-facing gap just above the head's hinge. Within reach of the upper branches, there are alcoves on either side of the opening of the hallway/alleyway, on which rest two more examples of this kind of creature, one facing us, the other facing away. The one facing us has its eyes closed and its face split open the same way the hopping ones are, but its knee is bent such that the crescent-tipped foot is level with the chin, allowing the head to rest. Opposite it, the creature which faces away opens from the back, instead, its face presumably held together on the other side, and the leg appears to kneel, with the heel of the foot facing outward and the tip of the foot on the floor of the alcove.

Two screenshots from SculptGL of my digital sculpture titled "Armtaur", showing the front and back of the smooth, beige sculpture. It is a human torso without arms at its shoulders, instead attaching at the hips to a single human arm (a left arm, specifically) about twice as tall as this torso, similar to how one attaches to a horse's body as a Centaur. The head at the top of the torso is attached and proportioned normally, and tilts slightly, while the large singular arm is bent sharply at the elbow behind it, with the hand making contact with the plinth directly below it only by the fingertips, as if frozen during a powerful gallop. Although there are no visible genitals at the front of the creature, from behind we appreciate that it *does* have buttocks.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Feb 19

💛Quote with your yellow art! 💛

A small oil-painted portrait of the proceratosaurid dinosaur Kileskus, peering in from left-of-frame and showing us its neck and head facing right. A bluish purple crest sits atop its midface, with vertical black and white marks rippling along its base, the snout has small, dark grey scales and a marigold stripe running from the base of the crest to the nostrils, with short black feathers forming a rounded trapezoid in front of the eyes, and marigold feathers covering the rest of the visible upper body. The yellow gets paler/duller in proximity to the eyes and the forehead behind the crest, and has black flecks along the back of the neck, and has a much more subtle pattern as it forms a beard along the lower jaw. The beard is smoothly included in a disk-edge that forms along the back of the head. The portrait is set against a grey background.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Feb 14

if you see this, post a dragon!

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Feb 8

Now that my niece and her partner have taken it home (thankfully not before I took 50 some-odd pictures of it), here's my completed sculpture of their dog, made with Creative Paperclay around a soft metal armature mounted to a wooden modified jar lid, and painted with oils, 2025-26.

A closeup photo of the sculpture from a high angle against a dark background, looking down at the dog's left temple. All below the neck is cropped out by the bottom of the frame (and what's visible of the neck is blurry) but the head is in focus, with the black, pink, and brown bits standing out strongly in the low exposure. We see both of his eyes, though the right one is much more oblique, and we can see the top arches of both his ears. his black nose, almost blending in with the background, points left-of-frame.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Jan 23

Art Train! Tagging: @midiaou.bsky.social @saureal.bsky.social @vyhrart.bsky.social @ansh7163.bsky.social

Photo of a Stegosaurus bas-relief on a pane of glass, which rests on a grey, patterned carpet. *One* row of plates is done, those on the "far" side of the animal which presents us its right flank, standing on a rough patch of ground and lifting its head to bellow at some unseen offender at right-of-frame. The sculpture is made of white clay.

An equirectangular Köppen Climate Zone map of the homeplanet of Jay Eaton's Centaur aliens, with the key superimposed on the inner ocean encircled by the pole-to-pole Supercontinent, and the map's title on a grey bar along the bottom edge of the image. The ocean is a solid mild sky blue, and the various climate zones are represented by solid patches of mostly warm and neutral colors (including some pale, dull greens and small patches of dark purple), roughly corresponding to the planet's foliage colors.

An acrylic painting of an underwater scene, with a dark blue background, a sandy foreground, and a teal gradient between these in the midground. A dark grey Clidastes (a Mosasaur) swims in from right-of-frame, its back half not in frame yet, carrying in its jaws the yellow-winged carcass of the Pterosaur Muzquizopteryx. One large fish (a Pachyrhizodus) and several smaller fish (Pepemkay) swim by a little distance away, their features muted and blurred by the water. The Cliadastes casts its shadow on sand near the bottom edge of the piece, and the Muzquizopteryx's right wing is draped over the mosasaur's neck.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Jan 16

The work continues apace! When I'm done with the plates and skin texture, I'm thinking I might cast this in silicone and do the finished piece in resin, both for the material strength and so I can reuse the clay (which it really lends itself to).

A more low-angle photo of the same bas-relief seen previously, taken from a couple inches above the right edge of the pane. The reflection from the window illuminates the empty space in front of the chest/below the neck, and we can see how flat this sculpture is, only a couple centimeters thick. The head is in focus, and the tail is still visible but much blurrier.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Jan 13

2/2 of the 2025 collage breakdown for #PortfolioDay

Digital painting of a Neanderthal woman shifting her weight in preparation to throw a spear, seen from a low angle such that the distant dusty horizon is behind her shins. Her body is mostly turned toward us as she holds the spear (grey, uneven, pointed diagonally downwards toward the bottom right corner of the image) in her right hand, at left-of-frame, and lifts her left foot and left arm to lean on her slightly bent right leg. Her head faces more severely toward right-of-frame, and tilted so we see under her jaw, and, as a Neanderthal, she has a large nose on a projecting midface, a receding chin, strong brow ridges, and an oblong, low braincase. She is softly but densely muscled, with slightly short-looking legs compared to a large torso, and has brown skin with darker brown cranial hair and pubic hair. The background is a vertical gradient of a dull, hazy sky and completely flat landscape growing paler as they approach the horizon, and her shadow is cast thinly and faintly rightward.

Grayscale digital painting on a vertically tall canvas, depicting two Tyrannosaur corpses seen from directly above. They lie on their sides more-or-less facing one another, the Tyrannosaurus juvenile (left) missing its lower jaw, leaving its tongue to flop out onto the ground, and the Nanotyrannus adult (right) missing its right foot and most of the shin. The ground is dark and damp beneath them, shadows casting shortly but sharply leftward, with puddles blurrily reflecting a pale grey sky with pterosaurs wheeling overhead, and various branches and small animal remains scattered around them too. The Tyrannosaurus has large stripes and a scattering of smaller pale marks on its tail and flank, and feathers and tubercles on its head and neck. The Nanotyrannus has an upward- jutting crest in front of its eyes and larger arms and two-fingered hands than its relative, no feathers (for now) and white-ringed dark marks on its face, neck, flank, and hindquarters, and short vertical black marks in a row down its tail.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Jan 13

#PortfolioDay rolls round again, so here are the eight pieces featured in my 2025 collage, individually, with alt-text. The first four are featured here, and the last four will be in the next post. 1/2

An oil painting on thick white paper of a Dromaeosaurus and Foraminacephale pair, against a soft blue sky and pink field, both facing left. The Dromaeosaurus is a mid-sized maniraptoran seated with its chest raised, feathered arms tucked at its sides, and its head held high and slightly tilted away, with dark green feathers around its head and back of the neck, rich marigold feathers under its jaw down to its underbelly, dark blue on the wings and most of the tail except for a fan of orange at the end, brown on the legs and top of the foot, and the exposed skin around the mouth, eyelids, triangular crest just in front of each eye, and finger and toe pads are aquamarine. The Foraminacephale is a slightly smaller Pachycephalosaur ornithopod sitting in a similar position, leaning on the Dromaeosaurus and situated between it and us, nibbling at the feathers behind its jaw. Its right hand is touching the Dromaeosaurus's left wrist while the other hand hangs down. The back of its arm, flanks, thighs, and tail are mostly dark green, with yellow stripes coming down partway from the ridge of the back and connecting to the hands via the front of the shoulder, and a gradient to olive from the thigh to the foot. The Foraminacephale's head is tan and capped with a grey keratenous round dome, the neck fades between tan and yellow, and the underbelly is a paler duller yellow. The Dromaeosaurus's tail fan is draped over the Foraminacephale's tail, about midway down. Above this painting, pasted to the top flap of the card, is my caption for the illustration, typed and printed in small red text on white paper, which reads:
"Dromaeosaurus and Foraminacephale!
These two lived about 70 million years ago in what is now the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, and are both Dinosaurs themselves, Dromaeosaurus being a carnivorous Theropod and Foraminacephale being a herbivorous Ornithopod.
The individuals seen here are pair bonded, and are taking turns preening one another."

An image divided into three parts, with the left half being a photo of a tan sketchbook page featuring pencil sketches of an Anchiornis and a trio of Amargasaurus. The Anchiornis in this sketch is drawn naked with only the suggestion of feathers outlining it, stretching its large arms to the side and looking down to where its feet are preparing to perch. The right half of the photo is divided top to bottom, with the top part being a photo of a finished Anchiornis artwork made with marker, nailpolish, and paint on pink construction paper, now fully feathered with almost no skin visible, primarily dark grey with black-spotted white feathers on its wings, legs, and tail vane, and red feathers on the crest at the back of its head. The photo beneath this is of another artwork with this same Anchiornis, but now fully featherless and drawn in pencil on the same kind of pink construction paper. Compared to the tan paper sketch at left, it is much cleaner and more anatomically precise, and is a companion piece to the fully feathered and colored artwork seen above it.

An arrangement of five Archaeocete portraits in the same positions as in the previous image, but this time this is a collage of Blender screenshots instead of a digitally edited pencil sketch. These models have a solid white skin textures and shiny black eyes, are set against a dark grey background, and their lighting situation puts the highlights at the center of the tops of their snouts, the deepest shadows directly under their jaws, and a faint blue reflected light softening the shadows on the right-hand sides of their faces. they appear somewhat glossy, but this effect is on low-opacity. These were sculpted to closely match the digitally-corrected sketches, and with the benefit of realistic shading it's even more apparent how weird-looking these animals were, especially from this angle where they're looking straight down their snouts at us and holding their heads in an almost human-like way atop their upright-positioned torsos, with lots of neck folds to show for it.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Jan 13

I got four of my pieces in the Virtual Paleoart Gallery until March! Check it out, there's a bunch of other good work in there too : ) artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibitio...

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Jan 11

The piece of plastic I mounted this Stegosaurus on has warped pretty severely, so Im starting over on glass, instead, with a new kind of air-hardening clay with paper fiber in it. Thankfully this stuff also regains its pliability pretty nicely when I add water, so I'll be able to add texture later.

A low-angle photo of a soft clay bas-relief Stegosaurus mounted on a translucent white pane of plastic (which was once used to divide slices of coldcuts), looking at the top edge of the pane, such that we look "down" at the dinosaur's spinal plates as the pane lies flat on the ground. From this angle, the warping of the plastic pane is very apparent, causing the clay to detach in some places.

A photo of a 8x12 pane of glass, atop a sheet of cardboard the same size, lying on the floor, with some white clay mounted to the glass and some other objects resting on the glass. At top is a mostly finished soft-clay bas relief of a Stegosaurus mounted to a thin rectangle of plastic, which has warped somewhat, then below that, an array of metal tools with their "business ends" pointing rightwards, including (top to bottom) a small sewing needle, an X-acto knife, the lever for a nail clipper, and a tiny thin black rod with a shallow scoop at the end. Below this, mounted directly to the glass pane, is some white air-hardening clay which I have begun shaping into a slightly larger imitation of the soft clay Stegosaurus. So far, there is a wedge of clay along the bottom edge for the ground, the torso, tail, and head of the dinosaur without any plates or spikes added yet, and the so-far footless right (foreground) forelimb and hindlimb, almost touching the ground.

A closeup photo of the new Stegosaurus's head, which is small and tilted up slightly, with an open mouth and a narrowed eye. Part of the dinosaur's shoulder and upper back are also in frame, and there are faint smudges of white clay dust on the glass pane which the bas-relief is mounted on.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Dec 31

#artvsartist2025 More works-in-progress than fully finished pieces this year, but I'm at least able to put this many together. Here's to getting more done by next December, and thanks very much to everyone who followed and supported me in my first full calendar year being here.

A grid-style square collage of 8 of my artworks from this year with a photo of myself in the center, all tiles being squares themselves, some closely cropped. Clockwise, from top-left to middle-left, and roughly in date-completed order, are the following: Paranthropus Boisei Bust (Blender); Dromaeosaurus and Foraminacephale Valentine's Card (oil paint on cardstock); Anchiornis Valentine's Card (acrylic and marker on pink construction paper); Not-To-Scale Archaeocete Mugshots (Blender); Taleta taleta Browsing (Photopea); Close-Crop of Neanderthal Woman Winding Back Spear-Arm (Photopea); Nano-Tyranno Carcasses (Photopea); and Köppen Climate-Zone Map of Jay Eaton's Centaur Alien Homeplanet (Photopea). The self-portrait photo in the center has me looking up and to the left, my head mostly turned toward the viewer, and I am wearing black and silver eyeshadow, mascara, and eyeliner with the sun warmly lighting most of my face and casting deep shadows rightward.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Dec 29

Update to the Nano/Tyranno carcasses piece but still a little short of finished, where I've dimmed the background a bit and added some patterns to the dearly departed stars of the show.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Dec 29

~~~qrp with your wing art!~~~

my acrylic painting "Uncertain Landing", featuring the small heterodontosaurid Tianyulong gathered in a group of five fluffy individuals turning their attention toward the similarly sized pterosaur Pterorhynchus,which has just awkwardly landed with a torn wingtip in the undergrowth of a somewhat open forest. This scene is viewed from above such that the nadir is at the bottom of the frame and the convex, crowded horizon is a bit above the top of the frame, as if we're perched on the thin branch of one of the pale brown, straight-trunked, lichen-spotted trees.

A printout of a digital painting of a Jeholornis (a basal avalian dinosaur) standing with its wings outstretched on a forest floor, at the edge of a narrow puddle, mounted on a piece of thick white paper that forms a narrow border around it. The once-flatly-green forest floor is now rendered in a combination of marker and oil paint to loosely suggest a variety of small shrubs. The Jeholornis's shadow and a patch of solid black feathers on its face (forming a mask around the eyes) are rendered in black marker. Narrow patches of bright green oil paint simulate sun highlights on the forest floor, against the areas in shadow. On the surface of the puddle, a similar patch is created with pale sparkly nail polish, the forest's canopy is reflected in it with a flock of Confuciusornis also visible, flying overhead, and the footprints of an unknown larger, 3-toed dinosaur form yet more sub-puddles on the other side.

OnlyScarcelyScaly@onlyscarcelyscaly· Dec 10

Sketch(es) vs. Final(s)