From Voyageurs National Park on FB:
From Voyageurs National Park on FB: Called “Catamaran” by locals, Bert Upton is among the strangest of historical characters on area waters. He lived in a hut built over a dug-out at Squirrel Narrows. Found frozen to death in the 1930s by Kettle Falls pioneer Oliver Knox; Upton was perched lifeless in the snow just a half-mile from his home. Shunning civilization, Upton defined the word hermit. First spotted rowing his crude log raft on Namakan, no one knows how he got there. Upton’s accent implied an English heritage but any personal inquiries brought a stony silence. Some suspected him a man fleeing the law; others saw a bizarre outcast; everyone knew he was peculiar. Just five feet tall and wildly unkempt, Catamaran wore hacked-off pants and walked barefoot with a stick. Winter demanded shoes but no socks, a cast-off Mackinaw, and a trailing cap made from the leg of old underwear. He was oddly religious, and suspicious of being poisoned. Surviving on snared rabbits and fish, he ofte...
I'm trying to figure out the artist's views on dinosaur skin/fur from his blog, how much of it is speculative and what's informed by science. Wish I could find it all summarized in one place. I guess I'm like a decade behind on the state of paleoart.
ReplyDeleteThe thing with some of people I've been following lately is that they're not afraid to be pretty speculative. Like here, there's no hard evidence of fuzzy adult T-Rexes, but it's seeming like more and more like just about every theropod late Jurassic on is showing up with evidence of feathers, so why not paint it?
ReplyDeleteFor a long time the refrain was "only draw what the fossils show," so you got reconstructions where the skin looks stretched over muscle and bone.
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