American Museum of Natural History - Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus, Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

So I realized something as I was doing copies of things at the MET. I could be doing the skeletons over at the American Museum of Natural History. The Next day I was there. Throughout the week I have been working on these watercolors.

Daniel Smith makes a line of watercolors that use semiprecious stones as pigments. I have been fascinated by them as they dry with an uneven/semi patterned finish to them.  So I have been slowly collecting and using various tubes of them. It kind of scratched that itch of a dorky kid who grew up with a rock collection.

The dark purple in this painting is an Amathyst pigment. I was surprised that when it dried it had a sparkly finish to it; like I sprinkled glitter on the painting as it was drying.  I was doing this with a two color complement in mind so the amethyst paint was in the entirety of the stegosaurus, almost all the yellows were darkened with the purple amethyst paint.

I was actually kind of horrified looking at it on my wall.  It looked really silly but as I looked at it a bit more it began to grow on me.  So I decided to do a few more in this purple/yellow method Making a series of sparkly dinosaurs.

I'm kind of on a roll with these paintings my end goal is to do 10 of these dinosaur watercolors before I head back to Hawaii for the summer.