Life Intervenes

It is unfortunate that the past two days have seen no new posts concerning Dakotaraptor. The dromaeosaur has not been forgotten or pushed aside but other events and goings on were slightly more relevant than revamping a pair of months old posts. That said, I should schedule in a time to write so I do not put off days of writing these posts, even if the animal from the calendar was recently an animal on the blog anyway. Friday is image day now with the new schedule, though, and with a popular dinosaur images are changing and being uploaded almost daily because artists appear to be enamored with the large dromaeosaur still. An artist we have not seen around here lately, possibly because I have simply not looked at his page for a while, is Tuomas Koivurinne. Mr. Koivurinne has always been a favorite (because of his style and interests in dinosaur and military themes) and in the early days of the blog was featured very regularly. His interpretation of Dakotaraptor is probably one of the most dark portrayals in content and composition that is available for viewing online. To be honest, the color scheme involves a lot of cool but light colors, the darkness of the image in relation to other Dakotaraptor images online is due to the minimal sky influence on the image. Many of the images available are on white backgrounds or feature a more open terrain. The closest composition of images are those that we have seen from Emily Willoughby, but I would argue that her Dakotaraptor, while appreciably fierce, appears to be much more huggable than this rather raptorial version. I think that the image dichotomy between the two illustrators and their work emphasizes the fact that this was both a feathered and fluffy looking dinosaur (an argument could be made for the huggability of Koivurinne's Dakotaraptor also) and a carnivorous and potentially highly active predator. Similar view points are seen in the way that people view eagles, hawks, and falcons today as animals that look somewhat soft because of their feathers but tend to also respect their capability to produce violence to procure food. Dakotaraptor may have appeared fluffy and cuddly but it was a vicious predator and Koivurinne's artwork here captures that aspect of the animal's life perfectly while remaining quite safe for work and, I would argue, for sensitive audiences.

©Tuomas Koivurinne