Saturday 18 January 2014

Paleoart (repost)


I did mention in my previous post that I had been doing the paleo art - a popular unofficial term for the kind of illustration, sculpture and animation in which the extinct animals are reconstructed and/or restored. I must have drawn my first prehistoric animals when I was 5. Unfortunately, I haven't kept any of those early works.
My first inspiration most certainly came from the Karl Zeman's film "Cesta do praveku" (Journey to the Beginning of Time) (1954). Of course, the whole movie was inspired by the work of the great Czech illustrator and paleoartist ZDENĚK BURIAN (1905 - 1981) who was also involved in the film production.


I think the next inspiration was the fantastic Rudolph F. Zallinger’s The Age of Reptiles mural which is displayed at the full length of the east wall of the Yale Peabody Museum’s Great Hall.
Many years later, I have visited the Museum and saw the mural while staying at my friend and also a paleoartist Brian Franczak's home in Connecticut. It is funny that my old (1987) illustration of Torosaurus chasing a varanid Palaeosaniwa, who had stolen one of it's eggs, has been displayed at the Yale Peabody Museum for about a decade now.
Trivia: "The Age of Reptiles mural at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University was completed by Rudolph F. Zallinger, a graduate of the Yale School of Fine Arts, in 1947 after 4 1/2 years study, preparation and painting."(quote from the Yale site)
It is interesting that I have painted my gouache Torosaurus painting exactly 40 years later.

  



No comments:

Post a Comment