Trystahn Turner | Project title

Parasaur

This art piece was one of my first actual attempts at making art on my tablet. It was something I was really new to and had only experimented with a bit, usually just small funny sketches but nothing major. This drawing was meant to be a gift for a friend and it turned out great. They really liked it and I was happy with the end results. Looking at it now though, it's definitely not perfect and if I retried it I would change some things, but for my first real attempt at a project on the tablet it's not bad.

My influence for the Parasaur artwork came from a few things. First my fascination with skulls and plants, and their fascination with dinosaurs. The person this work was for had a few close childhood friends who all gave themselves a specific type of dinosaur they were labeled with. Their dinosaur just so happened to a Parasaur. I chose roses because those were their favorite flower and kinda just threw it all together as best as I could.

This project stands out a lot to me because while working on it I changed so many things. I spent a lot of time messing around with the different brushes and features the program offered. I used Procreate when making this which was a brand new program for me. I hadn't even watched a tutorial video or anything that showed me how to use the tools. I like to jump into programs and just explore until I have a question, then I look up a tutorial if I need to. This project showed me a lot of useful tips for working with Procreate and heavily influenced how I would go about art in the future. The shading and small details were something I really tried to focus on with this piece. I spent a ridiculous amount of time messing with the shading on things like the eye sockets and the petals of the roses.

A pencil drawing of a skull with a large array of plants around it

Skulls and plants have always been something I really enjoy drawing. I’m not exactly sure why but something about them just captivates me, and I mean that in the least serial killer-like way I can say it. Plants and nature specifically have always been something I like looking at. On vacations I was always trying to find giant and old trees and weird looking flowers, even if I wasn't planning on drawing them. My admiration for landscape paintings is likely influenced by that part of me as well. I can still remember in elementary school when I was wandering the library and I saw a recreation of the iconic Starry night painting. At that moment I was so fascinated by it, I even ended up asking the librarian about it and trying to recreate it myself. At the time my art skills weren't exactly at a professional level so landscapes were quite a challenge and I stopped trying for a long while. Eventually in highschool I got back into drawing things like plants and even the occasional landscape.

A pencil drawing of a skull with extra detial put into the shading

The shading was a big part of this project for me. I spent a lot of time trying to get it right, especially since I hadn't done a lot of really detailed shading before. Most of my art had simple shadows if any at all and more specifically with skulls I hadn't done any shading before. This project really taught me how much of a difference it makes in the end and how worth it is in the long run. Even if it is a huge pain.

After this project I got even more interested in drawing detailed skulls. In a college drawing class I took, after I had finished the project, we spent a long time focusing on shadows. One of those practice drawings I did in that class ended up being a skull which I still think looks incredible. You can see it here on the right. This skull is still one of my favorite pencil drawings I’ve ever made and furthered my interest into the exploration of shading and drawing skulls.

This project was a huge stepping stone for my style and future as an artist, really changing my perspective on how I made art in the past. It taught me a lot of valuable things that I still remember whenever making art today.