I liked this one so much, I'm leaving the unsigned version under the cut as a treat along with my usual rambles and the speedpaint! Proud of this one! Enjoy!
A little self critique, but I think the photograph I was drawing from has a better composition and I got the proportions wrong, so I'm not doing it justice.
The egg case is much more elongated and so is the embryo. There's also that dual shadow going on in the egg giving it a sort of blurry double image that I didn't quite capture. I probably could have done it with layers and Gaussian blur, but my current goal is to master traditional painting methods even though I'm usually using a digital medium, which means fastidiously sticking to one layer as much as possible. No excuses though. I still like the result and I learned a lot.
This time around, as opposed to prior years, I don't keep the reference open in an overlaid window or on the piece itself. So I do have to physically switch tabs to check the image in my browser. Which has honestly taught me a lot. Like I truncate and smush images horizontally in my brain. Hmmm.
Regardless, it was a fun and intimidating project! I've wanted to do some sort of embryo for a while since, other than being tasty, is, like, the main feature of all eggs. They're there to grow a little baby animal. That's, like, expressly what an egg evolved to do, and everything else that eats them is just exploiting what is apparently a fact of the universe. Baby food is apparently delicious. Cats out here rescuing feral kittens because they know it means their human buys kitten food and they get to steal some. Bees vomiting special sugar slime into little wax cells so they have stuff to feed the colony and putting extra effort and stuff into the royal jelly for the baby queens. And everything that has ever eaten an egg has been a part of that tradition. "Yeah this is meant to nourish something else, but let me get a big bite of that."
So I thought, now that I have two years (RIP 2024) and some change under my belt doing the edible stuff, I might as well do the sort of egg you probably don't want to eat. There's a squirmy baby in there. In this case, a little shark. Speaking of. The Dogfish is itself a species of catshark. So to all the kids that ever thought cats were just girl dogs, apparently scientists weren't helping that misconception when naming this species. I don't remember back far enough to know if I ever thought something like that. But according to my parents, I figured out really quick that the Stork wasn't real so I've known basically since toddler age when I could articulate more complex thought that human mothers grow human babies and that's what pregnancy is about. Definitely knew by age 7 because that's when my youngest cousin was born and I remember that far back and remember not being at all confused about how he became.
So yeah! Embryo debut. Other than purely decorative eggs like Fabergé or Easter Eggs and things like that, I've done, I think, most "unique" and iconic iterations of the egg. Other than just drawing various bird eggs from the outside, which honestly I might do. Lots of interesting eggshells out there.
But for the time being I would like not to just draw "Here's an egg in the shell, but in 30 different colors!" No problem with that of course, I just want to arrive there when that's an interesting thing to tackle for me personally. Maybe ease into it. Drop a few of the weirder bird eggs every now and then.
But for now I'm just grooving and learning how to draw stuff with at least a little imagination. Start taking the training wheels off and do a little indirect referencing instead of direct referencing to get better at training my imagination to actually retain what things look like so I have mental concepts and references instead of just "put line exactly there." Which, hey, is still a valid method of drawing! Grid method and trace method are both valid ways of training your hand and eye to make the right shapes and see the right things.
Another perk of indirect referencing is that I'm not eye-dropper-ing 3-5 colors because I'm too chicken to trust my eyes. I'm not GREAT at color matching yet. But I'm getting better! And the more I work without training wheels, the better I'll get! I'll have to do more color studies as time goes on, but Eggtober is a great excuse and great practice.
Anyway! That's hella yammering and I'm running on fumes today so We're gonna cut it here. Not a picture-perfect piece, but I like this one best out of the 5 I've done this year. Learning, growing, kicking ass. As long as I'm learning, having fun, or (ideally) both, then that's all that matters. That's how it all started, after all. Just a way to get back into art and actually enjoy it again! Love seeing everyone's eggceptional eggs! Lots of folks getting into it for the first time to. I hope you're all having as much fun learning and splashing around as I am because I love seeing all the fancy eggies!
Here's your reward for your patience. No distracting signature, just nice shark eggie.
And of course my speedpaint so we both at least have some idea how I managed to splash all the digital paints together in a way that I like!
Today I want to share about the different types and shapes of shark eggs!
Most experts studying sharks think that viviparity (live birth) is the ancestral baseline for sharks, and over time different shakes have re-evolved egg-laying as a response to external pressures. Because of that, among the sharks that lay eggs, shark eggs can look radically different!
There are three main groups of shark eggs!
First, the classic "mermaid's purse" shape! These are laid by catsharks, namely those in the order Scyliorhinidae as well as the finback catsharks. They're the only members of the ground shark order to lay eggs. Exact color, shape, and size vary by species, but these eggs all have the classic purse shape and long tendrils that will snag on things and anchor the egg in place to keep it safe.
Next, the oval-shaped egg cases! Most carpet sharks give live birth, but zebra and bamboo sharks are the exception. These egg cases lack the tendrils cat shark eggs have, and instead have special fibers on the bottoms that help keep them in place on the seafloor instead.
Finally, the distinctive spiral-shaped eggs of bullhead sharks! The spiral shape helps the eggs get wedged into cracks and rocky crevices on the rocky sea bottoms where bullhead sharks live to keep them safe.
