A Little Bit of What and How
Most of the time I’ll portray the creatures I draw for blog posts in natural situations and surroundings. But as I did with the advanced Australopithecine in the very first image, I decided to have fun establishing the size of featured animals by using the Olduvai idea of a real human figure. Fine looking old man that I am, I will use myself occasionally, but it’s more fun to use friends (you know who you are…consider yourself warned) as models.
I’d been learning of Chris Clarke’s love affair with the desert reading his elegant prose at Creek Running North. He’s working on a book about Joshua trees and I thought it would be interesting to give him a visual that he couldn’t possibly get with his camera.
Chris Clarke in the “Way Back” machine
For a larger more detailed image click here
With Chris as a willing test subject for this initial post, I transported him 12,000 years into the past. We see him here overlooking a late Pleistocene pluvial lake somewhere near present day Death Valley. Joining Chris on the Joshua tree and juniper covered hillside are his well-loved dog-buddy Zeke and a Shasta ground sloth, Nothrotheriops.
I’m probably going to disappoint some art purists because this is a digital image, not a “real” painting. It was done in Adobe Photoshop using a Wacom Graphics Tablet. But just so there’s no misunderstanding, no photos were imported into or used in this piece except as reference. I simply started with a blank screen instead of a blank canvas. Fortunately or not, it’s the best way to do illustration for book or magazine reproduction these days. Publishers prefer a disc to traditional art as it eliminates two major steps on the way to preparing an image for printing.
I have to admit that I wouldn’t be able to do this Olduvai blog using traditional methods. It would simply take too much time. Doing the art on layers in Photoshop allows me to start the final image with a minimum of preliminary work. As I drew each element I constantly moved them around experimenting with the layout. Chris sent me half a dozen photographs of himself to work from, including a nice close-up profile. I drew him first, establishing the pose and letting that define the placement of his companions. I guess I did pretty well, because I got the nicest note from Chris’ wife Becky when I sent them a jpeg of his figure to check out.
Zeke was next, and like each of the three figures, I drew him separately. Chris has lots of good pictures of Zeke but it took almost a dozen photos for me to understand him and approach actual Zekeness to Chris’ liking. People inevitably and honestly see things in their pets that others can’t, and I have to admit, it’s rather easier to paint their children. Once completed, I had to adjust Zeke’s size a bit to fit him proportionally to Chris, but in Photoshop that takes only seconds. Having to get it all exactly right on a preliminary sketch with paper and pencil would (used to) take hours (days) and then, after transferring the image to illustration board or canvas, I’d never have been able to change it without major work.
There are of course no photo references for Nothrotheriops. However, Shasta ground sloths died out only a few (9+) thousand years ago, so there are all the skeletal elements and even hair, skin and sinew to work from. I’ll try not to do this in the future, but I have to admit that I could have gotten a ticket on my artistic license for this image. The animal I portrayed with Chris and Zeke is the Yao Ming or Shaqille O’Neil of Shasta (not quite giant) ground sloths. He’s maybe 20 to 30% too large for an average individual, but he fit there so well!
And the best part of using Photoshop for these illustrations, Nothrotheriops is completely rendered on his own layer. I can pull him out of the image and use him on his own. Those improbable feet can be shown in all their awkwardly bizarre detail.
For a larger more detailed image click here
I’ll go into all three families of North American ground sloths in greater detail in future posts, but Nothrotheriops’ feet need a little explaining. The calcaneum, the heel, is flat against the ground just like ours. The difference (among other things) is that the metatarsals are rotated nearly 90 degrees outward and are stacked on digit 5. The big claws on digits 2, 3 and 4 then point inward. The animal certainly was no speed demon, perhaps moving with the same “sloth” as his present-day, tree-hanging cousins. The large, sickle-like claws on the front feet, also on digits 2, 3 and 4, were all weight-bearing, and our beast walked on the back of the terminal phalanges. As strange as this arrangement is, it obviously worked well enough. The Nothrotheriops line, starting with small South American Miocene genera such as Hapalops lasted over 20 million years.
So at last…I’m off and running, slowly on bad knees. Today is the beginning of my 60th year of life.
November 29th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
It’s beautiful. I’ve seen it before at Chris’s place, but it’s even more interesting to learn how it was (technically) done. I can’t draw to save my life, but image manipulation I can kinda understand.
Happy birthday!
November 29th, 2005 at 1:14 pm
you are certainly blessed! excellent work. my art goes into skin and on canvas. i wouldnt know where to start digitally, but its interresting to know how it is done.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Happy Birthday, Carl. I was amazed when I first saw the picture of Chris & Zeke, and wondered exactly how you did it. I love your work, and found examples on the internet. Good luck and keep the art flowing.
Chris’ Mom.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
Happy 59th Birthday, old friend.
I’m so happy you got the site up and running, and I’ll bet it will be a window into a whole new world of lucrative opportunities and interesting happenstances.
All the best.
November 29th, 2005 at 3:14 pm
Hello again, Carl, from a fellow science illustrator in-training(we spoke over email a little while back, thanks to Chris Clarke).
I’m really glad to see you finally got your blog up and running. Happy birthday.
November 29th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
Happy birthday!
I love your art! I first saw it on Pharyngula, and love it. Keep up the good work.
November 29th, 2005 at 6:58 pm
Agreed–very attractive work. Happy birthday!
November 29th, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Nice work and happy birthday !
November 29th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
WOW!
And happy birthday!!!!
November 29th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
[...] The extremely talented natural history artist Carl Buell, whose work has been featured in the books of Carl Zimmer and rotating through the upper left corner of the biological uber-blog Pharyngula, has recently begun writing and posting on his new blog, Olduvai George. [...]
November 29th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
Olduvai George
OK, everyone, go say hello to Olduvai George right now. Carl Buell, the well known science illustrator (who did many of the illustrations I've ripped off for the rotating logo in the top left corner of this page), has finally brought his weblog on…
November 29th, 2005 at 11:56 pm
Hooray, welcome, and happy birthday! What a great addition ot the Web!
Do you have any idea what a kick it is to walk around a corner, say, at Mono Lake, and see, “Hey! That’s Carl!” Meaning of course your work. And now I get to see it here too. You’ve made my day, and I’m hollering over my shoulder at Joe because he has to see this too.
November 30th, 2005 at 1:37 am
Great! Happy birthday! It’s wonderful to finally see your blog…I lost my blogging drive a year ago (and am now dissertating in full force so don’t see it coming back any time soon), but the treeshrew illustration you did for me was one of the high points of the whole blogging experience.
November 30th, 2005 at 2:10 am
Wonderful art and illustration. I am a HS Biology teacher and will make a collection of these for display and conversation for my room. Happy Birthday as well.
November 30th, 2005 at 5:53 am
Happy Birthday! And am happy to see your blog is up and running after reading many nice things about you on Pharyngula. Looking forward to many more great illustrations!
November 30th, 2005 at 7:38 am
Happy Birthday and welcome! I’ve admired your art at Pharyngula and look forward to seeing more of it. Do you have any mammoths laying around?
November 30th, 2005 at 9:33 am
Carl,
Great to see your site. As an Oregon Duck .. I would love to have a print of that duck in your first post. Beautiful.
May you continue to age gracefully and wisely.
November 30th, 2005 at 10:54 am
Congratulations! May I be the first here to ask you about that amazing beast that resembles an ungulate with canines?
November 30th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
Welcome to the world of blogs. Your illustrations have long been much appreciated and I look forward to reading and seeing your insights and illustrations of things both extant and extinct in this space.
November 30th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
Excellent! Happy Birthday, and how long did it take you to learn how to work with Adobe Photoshop?
December 1st, 2005 at 3:48 am
Love the art, hate the web design. Forcing me to read this at your width and not at mine (on my shiny 16×10 aspect ratio screen) is unfriendly. Bad artist, no cookie.
December 1st, 2005 at 7:42 pm
Carl, The clouds are lifted! Finally the explanation for your genius depicting ancient life forms.
YOU WERE THERE!!!!!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLD FRIEND
PS. nice dirt chris is standing on. How old is it????
BillMck
December 4th, 2005 at 1:59 am
carl-
followed a link from The Loom- i love your work! i agree, so much has been done with dinosaur illustration… but strolling around through the skeletons of extinct mammals in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, i wondered where all the images of these animals were. giant lemurs and hippo-elephants and that weird not-a-bear-not-a-weasel panther-type thing… i’ll pre-order your book today!
December 4th, 2005 at 2:52 am
BillMcK, I would imagine the soil I’m standing on is probably 2000-year-old cryptobiotic crust on Pliocene alluvium. Even in the Pleistocene it would have been bad form to clomp around in hiking boots on fragile cryptobiotic soils, which might not have grown back until the beginning of the Bronze Age.
December 7th, 2005 at 1:51 am
Dear Sir,
brilliant artwork!! As the Entelodont is a personal favorite prehistoric mammal-with-an-attitude of mine, I really appreciate seeing your renderings of this fearsome beastie! Being deeply involved with the miniature gaming community, I’ve begun lobbying several manufacturers to produce a model of the Entelodont…hopefully we’ll see one fairly soon! I for one could use a whole pack of ‘em…;-)
Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
http://www.metal-express.net
December 9th, 2005 at 10:09 am
[...] That’s right. This one’s worth seeing, not just reading. I’ve come across a blog titled Olduvai George. It’s author is a 60 year old natural history illustrator, with a particular interest in the last 65 million years. Check out his first post for some examples of his work. With his illustrations, he can bring things to life in a very special way. Creatures that haven’t roamed the earth for some time can now stir the imagination. [...]
December 12th, 2005 at 3:46 am
Unfortunately I’m not terribly suited to make an artistic comment on either your artwork or your writing, but I wondered if you had read “Evolution,” by Stephen Baxter? One of the characters is a Nothrotheriops, you see, and I was reminded of it by your illustration. The book is a personal favorite of mine and might be an interesting read for you as well.
December 19th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
Great pictures! I saw other pictures of Shasta ground sloth imagining more chunky, massive beast. I wonder if anybody knows how it really looked like.
And girl and monster is really great!
January 11th, 2006 at 12:44 am
I just wanted to pop in and say hi… so… Hi!
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:41 am
I guess the sloth was tree climber. Hind feet and stumpy tail grasped tree trunk like crampons of telephone pole repairman. Long neck and front legs bent and broken branches. It was very clumsy and destroying the tree, but feet with inward-pointing claws make no sense otherwise. I thought “what it is perfectly adapted for” instead of “how it lived despite it”. And also explains why trunk of Joshua tree is protected by sharp leaf bases!
January 31st, 2006 at 12:33 pm
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January 31st, 2006 at 3:49 pm
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February 14th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Hi, my name is Molly and I wanted to say thank you! Your article here helped me in my homework and wanted you to know it. I was searching for info about royalty free stock photography and I somehow ended up on your blog. Tomorrow my teacher is going to get a very good homework done! I wish we can keep in touch, thank you again.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
My daughter and I were just listening to an NPR report on the disappearing Joshua trees. They are suffering from lack of propogation by the now extict groundsloths. What a wonderful opportunity to be able to go the the computer and find a picture with both the tree and the sloth (nice job on the dog and human too!) Thanks. Your art is amazing!
My 4 year old says “I think that the sloth was a little bit scary because of his back feet”