Mechanical Paradox

This is the mechanical paradox project. The goal of this project was to take something mechanical and combine it with something natural or organic, or vise versa. I was pretty stumped at the beginning of this project because I don't have a lot of experience with making projects related to machinery or drawing in any architecture-type way. I also wanted to make this project dinosaur-centered once again, in order to keep my theme going.

I originally came up with the idea to make some dinosaur wind-up toys in an organic dinosaur environment, but then realized that I wanted to make my project more involved than that, rather than a mechanic dinosaur just pasted on an organic background. I decided to keep with my mini-theme of fossils, and thought it would be kind of cool if I somehow inter-weaved some rusty gears into the old fossil. I started my drawing with a hybrid-pterodactyl fossil observational drawing, with wingspans and skull shapes and body shapes from several different flying dinosaurs. Originally I was just going to make the joints and some bones made out of gears, but then I realized how small and detailed the body was, and how hard it would be to make little tiny gears in their place.

Finally I decided to make the joint gears go off into larger sections, taking up more space and acting as though the gears are growing out of the fossil. I wanted to keep the fossil pure-contour, because I think that would look the best with all of the small gears and bones and not distract from the detail. It was looking a little flat, however, so I wanted some way to fill out the bones and gears and making the drawing look more full, rather than flat. I decided to do this by adding some stippling shading with black pen, and then highlighting with white pen, which I think made my fossil look more full and well-rounded.