#skeletals

[iamthekaijuking]

Seikret skull and skeleton for the vid made in accordance with my paravian Wyvern theory. Skeletal references were velociraptor and utahraptor while seikret refs were provided by @krmoaten-blog as always.

Seikret hands are fucked up, their wings attach to the fifth finger when flight feathers irl attach to the second finger, so I worked around by just giving them really bad polydactyly. A thumb, four second digits, and a tiny vestigial third digit. I also modeled the forearms after megaraptors since they’re the only dinosaurs that can pronate their wrists. (I even added little quill knobs!)

I do wish I made the thoracic spine more flexible looking but at least it doesn’t look like it’ll snap if you sat on it like the concept art. Part of the issue when illustrating it and making it look flexible is that as far as I can tell, paraves generally have the same number of vertebrae across genera, so I had to give the seikret 8 cervical vertebrae and cram 12 thoracic, but I couldn’t fit 40 tail vertebrae. The skull I made actually properly attaches to the cranium too.

Also yes I know that the seikret’s shoulders move like a dog’s when running on all fours but shhh

[makairodonx]

My first skeletal drawing of 2025, and one of the very few full Skeletal reconstructions that has ever been made of Struthiosaurus austriacus, a small 2 to 3-meter-long nodosaur that lived in Europe during the Campanian and Maastrichtian stages of the Late Cretaceous.

[awannabepaleoartist]

Just found your page, and in in absolute LOVE. What are your preferred books/resources for practicing and studying dinosaur anatomy?

Thanks so much!

Apologies for the late/long reply. I can’t say that I’m “classically trained” in dinosaur anatomy, I’ve just kinda drawn them a lot over a long period of time and followed/taken mental notes from artists far better than I am lol. But, in terms of resources I AM aware of, these are pretty good:

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SkeletalDrawing.com, run by Scott Hartman, has a lot of really well done dinosaur skeletal diagrams to give you an idea of the proportions of different species (as viewed from the side) as well as a few diagrams showing the musculature of theropods like T. rex and Allosaurus and some basic anatomical terms.

https://www.skeletaldrawing.com/

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Matt Dempsey has a lot of spectacular drawings showing the musculatures of various kinds of dinosaurs, and as seen from the side, as well as from the front, back, top, and bottom to boot! They also have some skeletal drawings and some 3D renders of the dinosaur’s life appearances using those musculature diagrams.

https://www.artstation.com/sketchy-raptor

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The Paleoartist’s Handbook: Recreating Prehistoric Animals in Art by paleontologist & artist Mark Witton is available if you’re especially interested in accurately drawing dinosaurs and other extinct life. It’s a book I’ve read, it broadly goes over anatomy for many prehistoric creatures as well as many different aspects of the art form.

https://www.amazon.com/Palaeoartists-Handbook-Recreating-Prehistoric-Animals/dp/1785004611

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Books like Dinosaur Art and Dinosaur Art II showcase a lot of great art by many talented artists, and work great as some general guidelines/inspiration for your own art. They also work pretty well as coffee table art books!

https://www.amazon.ca/Dinosaur-Art-Worlds-Greatest-Paleoart/dp/0857685848

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In terms of some more general references,

RJ Palmer does nice paleoart every now and then and has a detailed diagram showing the anatomy of T. rex.

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Jacob Baardse has some of my favorite 3D renditions of dinosaurs, they do a good job of showing the underlying anatomy while having the models appear extremely lifelike. His Artstation page also has a few pieces where you can view their models in 3D, giving you a better idea for the body shapes at different angles.

https://www.artstation.com/littlebaardo

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There are many other amazing artists, too many to name here. Some of my favorite artists being Andrey Atuchin, Lucas Atwell, Fred Wierum, Joschua Knüppe, Rebecca Dart, David Krentz, Emiliano Troco, and Tom Parker among countless others. Many of them are quite knowledgeable, and if you look them up on social media you’ll find their art and discussions with other talented, knowledgeable people about similar topics. 

If you can afford them, David Silva is also producing highly articulated figures for the Beasts of the Mesozoic series. These are very accurate and are made in collaboration with some of the artists already brought up here. Good in-hand art references if that’s to you’re liking. Much better than most dinosaur figures you would find at the dollar store or some large supermarket.

I know this was long-winded and maybe more than you were looking for, but hopefully you at least found it interesting and even a small portion of this helps!

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[definegodliness]

an honest mistake

[j-gold-art]

[i-draws-dinosaurs]

I have been trying to find good models for Hesperonychus, but it’s a heavily underrated dromaeosaur. Do you have any good pictures of it for reference?

Unfortunately, we don’t really know much about Hesperonychus itself, since it’s only known from a partial pelvic girdle. However, we do know that it was a microraptorine, and in Longrich and Currie’s 2009 description they concluded that Hesperonychus was likely closest to Sinornithosaurus in terms of appearance. As such, I’d suggest using Scott Hartman’s Sinornithosaurus skeletal as a reference:

[iamthekaijuking]

Skeletal of the strangler giant from the dragonslayer codex. Kinda wish I used a thinner line thickness.

It’s basically built like a gibbon trying to be a honse, but with thumbs and perpetually shrugging shoulders apparently.

[iamthekaijuking]

What's your opinion on these pokemon skeletals from the official fossil pokemon exhibits? I am not asking for the models because they are an absolute eyesore, tyrantrum's jaw is fused to its cranium and aurora's frills are made of bone

These are actually remarkably good, like wow. Everything is there, from the gastralia, wishbones, coracoids, different vertebrae types, and Aurora even has osteoderms. They even included an accurate number of phalanges in each finger.

My only complaints are the lack of braincases, Tyrantrum’s lack of a sternum, and Aurora’s gastralia and numerous claws (which would imply it’s a prosauropod or basal sauropod and not an eusauropod, but that’s just a nitpick considering pokemon might not even be animals and are possibly aliens that replaced them if the implications of the sun and moon games are anything to go by).

I really like these, they’re incredibly accurate.