Atavism

So, this is one of the reasons why I've posted so little this year, apart from the fact I've been quite busy most of the time I've had for drawing I've spent on this. I was keeping a careful note of exactly how long I'd spent on it but I lost count sometime after I'd reached thirty hours. I've been working on this since January, which was when some of you might have seen me livestream some of it, so as you can tell from how big a deal I'm making about how long it's taken me I'm very glad to have finally finished it.

On to the picture itself, there are two of each species of anomalocaridid, including Anomalocaris, Laggania (or Peyotia), Schinderhannes and Amplectobelua. Hopefully I've got all of those right, I haven't checked them so they might not be. The colours were based mainly on nudibranches, although the two Hurdia (the ones with the shell thing coming out of their faces) were based on crabs and the Anomalocaris in the foreground was based on a mantis shrimp.

This was done for the cover of a magazine, although those of you who know me will be able to tell that I did have quite a bit of say what went on it (after all, why else would it feature anomalocaridids?) That's also why they're in a city and have metallic parts, since just plain normal anomalocaridids would not have fitted the magazine very well, it being about science fiction.

There are lots of small details on this that I don't normally bother with, especially on the further away anomalocaridids. But I think overall it's the background I'm most happy with, that and eye of the one in the foreground.

Brushes used: [link] [link]