#dromaeosaurs

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

stolen from that social media site gay millennials and grumpy boomers use

[palaeosinensis]

"Reel Around the Sky" and "Reel Around the Sun". I've had dromaeosaurs and ancient life on the brain something FIERCE lately. Coloration and patterning partially inspired by local hawks and the Carolina Wren.

[makairodonx]

Deinonychus and Suchomimus concept art sketches made in color pencil and outlined with a pen. I decided to go for a sexually-dimorphic take on the former, with the blue-gray/orange individuals representing the males and the brown-colored ones representing the females.

[knarme-art]

Another commission done, for Zapsalight on Twitter! My commissions are open.

[darekasama]

BEHOLD: the drawing!

This is one of my favourite scenes from my story, Project TL, taking place circa around the beginning of book 2. Both characters were having a terrible week for extremely different reasons and this was the culmination of it!

Featured in the drawing are William (Liam, protagonist, the guy) having a bad not so good overall terrible day and Teryel (Teri, love interest, as a dino) using his Utahraptor form to improve the situation.

This scene. Is the reason. I have seven-ish books instead of two!

(scene description & fun facts below)

They could have gotten together sooner but Teri had the BRILLIANT idea to sit on Liam. His dino brain went "wet kitten... must warm up!" and unfortunately for Liam that led to... this. Did I also mention that Liam at this point had no idea Teri could shapeshift thanks to his little magic item? Because he didn't, so in his pov a giant friggin beast just gave chase and decided to nest on top of him. Utahraptors were estimated to weight around 500 kg so good luck getting away from the bear sized bird intent on pinning you down...

The title refers to both the weight situation and the fact that, after this happened, the possibility of romance is crushed... at least until later in their lives :D

Mmm other fun facts about this drawing...

I has a LOT of fun doing the rain effect. I added more rain after posting the snippet, and it improved the scene a lot. The blurring serves the same purpose, making it easier to focus on the characters. And the rocks, man! Generally, the background was a pleasure to work on.

The characters themselves came out after a bit of a struggle to decide the pose. I made a collage from screenshots of videogames and random photos to use as reference, which was essential. I should really find some time to do studies/sketches on anatomy and poses at some point... Uni takes so much time though. It's also why I finished this drawing AFTER Valentine's Day.

The Utahraptor's tail was not forgotten: generally, tail stiffness in dromeosaurs is very hard to determine but from my understanding it seems like Utahraptors had at least some stiffness in their tails. Most references I found have it completely straight or very mildly curved to the side when the dino lays down. From the front, like here, it's not very visible either way. Which is a shame! The fanned feathers on the tail would have been a great addition, but it came to a choice between pretty tail and clear pose. Couldn't pass on drawing Liam clawing the ground, sorry tail!

Speaking of, we got full name reveals! I usually just call them Liam and Teri, although technically they are William and Teryel. So far I've also referred to them as protagonist and love interest. The books are from the point of view of both though, so maybe they're just... both protagonists? In their own way?

Liam's face was initially shown but I liked more the idea of leaving it hidden so it was changed. And maaaaybe I am still holding back the actual face reveal... Kinda feel bad for Liam here. I'd like to do a proper face reveal when he's looking more like the cool sunny guy he is and less like a wet kitten covered in mud. Meanwhile, Teri looks waaaay more competent and confident that usual, but don't let it fool yah: it's the bird brain taking over. He's NOT going be forgiven for sitting on Liam anytime soon, the man has pride and this is a HUGE slight.

Lastly, I LOVE doing layouts and working with shapes. The idea to frame the drawing by using a circle was immediate, and I made some plants poke out of the frame to give it some uniqueness. Titles are written by hand with love (and little hearts instead of dots), they were a last minute addition. It felt a bit empty to have just the drawing by itself. Now, with the titles, it looks way more polished in my opinion.

Many thanks to @a-dinosaur-a-day for the 2026 Draw Dinos Daily thing and for putting Utahraptor on Valentine's Day. It really inspired me to finally draw this scene!

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology…

Zoom into my Wulong reconstruction, from 2021. This was the press release artwork for a paper describing "The iridescent plumage in a dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur" (Croudace et al).

[i-draws-dinosaurs]

Would any dromaeosaurs have likely had bald heads like turkey vultures?

It's certainly possible, and I'd go so far as to say quite likely!

We do have some fossil evidence for dromaeosaurs with feathered heads:

Image sources: Tianyuraptor, Sinornithosaurus, Daurlong, Microraptor.

As for the rest though, we don't have a clear fossil of a bald-headed dromaeosaur! To be certain, we'd probably need to find specific impressions of naked skin around the head, which to my knowledge has not been found yet.

The feathered fossils above belong to either small (right side) or medium-sized (left side) dromaeosaurs, so it indicates that any dromaeosaurs up to a Velociraptor-type size certainly could have had feathered heads.

That being said, the level of head feathering is very variable in modern birds even within the same group. Some vultures have bald heads which may help with cleaning their faces and heat regulation, but there's much wider variation than you might expect! Even just within the clade Aegypiinae, we've got:

Image sources: hooded, griffon, red-headed, lappet-faced, white-headed, cinereous.

There's a whole range from nearly full plumage to fully naked skin folds to Justin Timberlake Ramen Hair, and I'd say there's no reason to think that dromaeosaurs and other feathered dinosaurs couldn't have had the same level of variation between species!

It's the kinda situation where in the absence of direct evidence, I'd consider varying levels of head baldness in dromaeosaurs as pretty reasonable speculation! So here's a Deinonychus decked out with a variety of different styles that are within the realms of possibility:

And that's not even taking into account that in a lot of bald-headed birds that skin space is prime real estate for all sorts of flippy flappy dangly bits and colours and lumps and bumps.

So basically, it's not like we can point at any particular dromaeosaurs and be like "that one probably had a bald head", but unless there's contrary evidence I feel it's very likely there was a lot of variation in how feathery the head was!

[paladingineer]

There is a dinosaur called Pyroraptor olympius - literally, "Fire thief of Mt. Olympus." So of course I had to draw Prometheus as one.