Dromornis meets Rose

Now that I have Dromornis on my brain, it's going to pop up in random places. I'll be drawing something else and I'll have a mental shift. Then I'll be drawing Dromornis again. Practice makes perfect and I have to be drawing this creature repeatedly. Most of them won't be masterpieces. In this one I didn't like the feet and I thought it felt out of balance. The humanoid that you see here is the character of someone I do a roleplaying game with on My Space which you can see at: http://www.myspace.com/mistyvaleintheforest The name of the character is Rose and she's supposed to be a shadow angel with some elf blood. I have to learn how to draw humans at some stage and I feel more comfortable in fantasy worlds than trying to sketch people's portraits in real life. I have had to fix Rose's image up because I have been told by her creator that she hasn't got pointy ears and she does have lips. She isn't your classical anime type girl it seems. I have publish many other pictures of Rose in my My Space profile at http://www.myspace.com/reswobia However, you do have to have an account yourself to see those pictures.

Dromornis in profile

This is one of the Dromornis stirtoni profiles that I am more pleased with. The haughty expression might suit the bird because if it was carnivorous it would have been on of the largest ones in the ecosystem. It would have been at least the tallest and probably would not take any nonsense from other animals. I imagine it with a vulturine head with bare pink skin that can flush bright scarlet when the bird is angry and blanch when it is frightened. You can see this in living vultures and in turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) gobblers whose bumpy heads can change colour every few seconds with shifting moods. We are going to have a lot of fun!

More Images of Distress....

This is another image I did when caught with a mathematical Environmental Geology practical. I was very frustrated because I knew that hydrogeology was completely (or I think completely) to what I want to do with my life and I was stuck here doing it. If I failed the subject I would be denied of my geology major all because of a skill that I would probably never use again in my life. Its really quite frustrating. The only time I got a High Distinction was when I was doing a course that was 50% palaeontology in first year. I get so irritated by being made to do everything possible except for the thing I want to do the most that the anger drives me to distraction and adversely effects my results. I definitely won't be a first grade Honour's student, although I know it isn't everything. How it is quite infuriating that I am judged on a two digit number which has no reflection on my intelligence. At least that leg of the journey is over.

Anyhow, all these thoughts as well as the grief over the death of my Mum in April this year brought me to tears and I had to flee the practical. I had never done that before. One of the main functions of drawing me, (since I had my break through when I was ten and realised I could turn a circle into anything I liked), was stress relief. It is a form of escapism. You can say that it helps me to manage my Asperger's Disorder and allows me to make sense of the world which is no small feat if you have the condition. Here I was imagining the sort of environment that Dromornis may have inhabited back in the Pliocene (5.3-1.8 million years ago) but of course I am not sure what sort of vegetation was around when Dromornis was roaming the country. That is something for further reference. I've got to stop putting claws on him. Watching him from a tree limb above is a Thylacoleonid. I know it is anachronistic but I was thinking of the Middle Miocene Wakaleo vanderleuri. I had just recently found a set of two volumes in the Science Library edited by Micheal Archer called Possums and Opossums. There was a paper there describing Wakaleo with enormous photos of the skull. I was very excited! I took photocopies for my drawings and ran off into my dreams with them!

In Reswobia, you can be as anachronistic as you like...



This is the reverse side of the sheet of paper. It is a random drawing of Aquiline the Imperial Diallonyx, my alter-ego. That climatology assignment and the environment geology stuff was driving me nuts.

In Times of Distress...

I did this drawing of a very stroppy Dromornis when I was stressing out during an Environmental Geology practical. You can see how I have shifted the wattles to the base of the neck, as in the cassowary (Casuarius), but I am thinking of doing something more similar to the brush turkey (Alectura lathami) now. My working memory is a total mess. It's one of the comorbidities that I have with Asperger's Disorder and it makes maths near impossible for me. I am also not very good at asking for help with this sort of thing. I have a Father that has Aspeger's Disorder as well but we seem to be mirror images of one another when it comes to intellectual ability. My Dad is good at maths, but not so good at English and the arts. I am the total opposite. Unfortunately, my Father expected me to be just like him. I mean I was in many ways when it comes to behaviour but not intellectual ability. He used to get angry with me because he assumed I would have an intuitive grasp of mathematical concepts as he did. I knew they wanted a polymath as a child and alas I never met the mark. When I was at school I was always at the top of the class for English but at the bottom in maths. Hence I was considered bright but stubborn. The teachers used to become very exasperated because I could not understand the whole concept of the times tables in grade one and they used to rage at me saying, "why can't you understand it? You should because all the other children know." But I wasn't like the other children ad I knew that since I was five. Thus I started not to ask for help. I became more and more socially withdrawn. I'm pretty sure these events still affect me now in a very big way. I can't help it very much because they are so deeply ingrained in my subconsciousness. The memories are upsetting because incidents like this continued to happen until I reached university.



This is a little Dromornis head I drew when I was panicking over my climatology assignment, which was all maths.

Speaking of Ostriches....

Yes, speaking of ostriches I had a look around in the Science Library for image of ostriches that I could study to improve how I portrayed Dromornis. They have quite a few books on Ostriches because they are farmed for their meat leather and feathers where the climate allows. They also do the same for emus and rheas. Hence there are plenty of photos and drawings of their anatomy and skinned carcasses which are very useful. In the image above I sketched a drawing of an ostrich skeleton and layered muscles on it that I found on a separate drawing. Really they are quite similar to chickens. Pay close attention to the next chicken you are eating. I'm always systematically stripping back the muscles on my drumsticks. :-)



This here is a sketching I made of a photo which was one of a sequence of photos showing the slaughter and butchering of a male ostrich. After it was dispatched that hung it upside down and skinned it. Then they removed the the viscera and cut it in half. In this sketch the viscera has been removed. I am really not completely happy with this one, I may go back to the library and do it again. Next time I will label all the muscles up for future reference. It might be a good idea to know what I am drawing. Above the ostrich carcass you can see two face which are my crude attempts to draw elves. I am doing a spot of roleplaying, which is like a communal story, on My Space. You'll find it on Rose Feather Hailweb's profile under the blog entry called "Travels." I am working on drawing her characters and I'm starting on Rose. You can see my attempts on my My Space profile which is called "Reswob" of course.



This here is a 15 minute sketch I did when I should have been studying for the exams. I really hated Environmental Geology. I think it was just a subject put in place for the mining company's public image. It was all about making the right political noises rather than protecting the environment from acid mine drainage. I was not motivated to study at all and I barely passed; probably because I was looking at ostriches like this one. I found this image at www.kenyaology.com I hope they don't mind because it's hard to find ostriches in Tasmania. :-)I was looking for a view from the rear in particular because I wanted to get an impression on how the legs fit onto the body. This is easier to see on the ostrich because the thighs and the underside of the bird are virtually featherless. This is a Somali Ostrich (Struthio camelus molybdophanes) which is distinguished from other ostrich subspecies (there are five) by its blue neck and legs. It also tends to roam about in pairs or alone rather than flocks as other ostriches do. It inhabits Kenya and it may be a separate species, isolated from the others by the Great Rift Valley.

Meditations on the Dromornis stirtoni wing

As I mentioned before Dromornis may have had features that served to intimidate a foe and avoid combat that could be seriously damaging. I happened across the fact that the cassowary (Casuarius sp.) has five bare quills on it's vestigial wings. These were once the primary feathers. I also noticed the very conspicuous wings of the ostrich (Struthio camelus). The female is all brown but the male is black with white plumage on his wings and his tail. I was looking at the skeletons of ostriches, rheas and emus. It turns out that the wings of the rhea are the largest, but those of the ostrich look the most impressive due the colour and nature of the plumage which seems to look more fluffy. (The rhea is brown all over). The ostrich also seems to hold out its wings more to the side, perhaps because the African climate is so hot. Anyhow the emu has the most vestigial wings of all. They are the shortest and I think they are comparable in length to those of the cassowary; after all they do have a common ancestor. It seems that these dromornthids had wings similar to those of the emu and perhaps the cassowary. Here I was experimenting with adding quills to the wings of Dromornis. I have an image of these birds threatening each other with them; rattling them to make an intimidating sound as they screech at each other. Maybe, to look more impressive, they had black and white bands on them.

Amongst the wings you can see how I am playing around with the general form of the animal, especially the head. Really, you have to make an utter mess of things if you really want to learn how to draw any subject.

First proper Dromornis stirtoni reconstruction

I went hunting around on the internet for some good pictures of Dromornis stirtoni skeletons and I came across a website of Gondwana Studios, a company that produces museum quality casts of fossils. I first heard of them from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery when I went asking about palaeontology back when I was in college. Must have been in 2004, when they had a dinosaur exhibition up. I was sketching their Gallimimus bullatus and their Tarbosaurus bataar skeletons. I would show them to you but the graphite has all smudged and it looks terrible. You are see their wares at www.gondwanastudios.com. It seems that the produce cats of a Dromornis skeleton or the related Bullockornis. This I sketched and layered muscle, skin and feather on it. I think that it may have had a naked head at least if it was a habitual consumer of flesh because it would save feathers from being soiled by gore. Arguements against Dromornis being a carnivore is the absence of a hook on the beak and long recurved claws on the toes, there being hoof-like strutures instead.

Personally, I think that it may have at least been omnivorous and maybe had a ecological niche like a bear (Ursidae). The beak of a bird as a keratin sheath to it. Keratin is the same protein that constitutes your fingernails, hair and the horn sheaths of cattle. The toucan is a bird with a massive beak as well and it does eat mainly fruit. However it does eat eggs and chicks of other birds as well as the occasional lizard. It does not have a pronounced hook on its bill but it does have a few tooth-like projections that point towards the back of the mouth. This would help it hook food into its mouth. These serrations are not present in the bone but only in the keratin sheath. I don't think it inconceivable that Dromonis had some comparable structure. Since the beak is very deep, it may have been also used for some sort of display struture as in a toucan and I have added stripes to it to break up its outline.

I'm thinking of putting wattles on this animal's throat, so I am looking at the wattles I can see in extant birds. I think they should be at the base of the neck, unlike how I have placed them here, so they don't get covered in blood and gore when it feeds. If this was indeed a predatory bird, I believe that display may have been important to it because the damage these animals could do to each other could be potentially fatal. They might have had mechanisms to intimidate an opponent to avoid such injurious conflicts.

Dromornithids, "Mihirungs" or "Thunderbirds"

When I came back to Tasmania after my wonderful time at Riversleigh smashing open limestone to get fossils, I decided that my new subject for the pen and paper would be Dromornis stirtoni. After I had drawn a pair of Thylacoleo carnifex scrapping of course. (They are not anatomically sound I know but I will get better at this.) So I pulled out Tom Rich and Pat Vickers-Rich's Wildlife of Gondwana book from the shelves of the Science Library in the University of Tasmania and sketched these dromornithid legs. I saw the skull on one of Micheal Archer's powerpoint slides as he gave a lecture in the relative cool of the evening on the warm open timber awning where we took our meals. Seeing that skull sparked my interest in Dromornis stirtoni once more. I made a quick sketch in the fleeting seconds he had it on the screen...


Here it is amongst the notes I took from Mike's lecture. I really like the shape of this skull. Look at the deep upper jaw with it's beautiful curves. It has such a good solid chin. Isn't it worth swooning over?! :-D After the lecture and all the questions were asked with the lights switched back on, I did a quick reconstruction which was based more heavily on what I remembered of emus, although these Dromornithids are only distantly related to emus. (We actually don't know how these birds are related to other avian lineages but some believe that they are related to primitive anatids, hence Dromornis stirtoni has been dubbed "The Demon Duck of Doom" because of its possible carnivorous habits; others think that they are distantly related to galliforms and it was really a gigantic mutated chook).

You can see the reconstructed head of Dromornis stirtoni lower lefthand corner above. I can do something more interesting with this animal I believe and that is what my next few posts will focus on. In this picture you can also see how I have drawn Thylacoleo carnifex and Thylacinus cynocephalus. Also, I have drawn the skeletal major structures of what I hoped to be closer to the marsupial form. I had an eye opening discussion with Henk Godthelp who told me that that the shoulder structure of marsupials is unique and the scapula is orientated more vertically. The pelvis is likewise in a more vertical position as opposed to the horizontal orientation that you see in placental mammals. Also there are more vertebrae attached to the pelvis of marsupials than those of placental mammals. The marsupial posture is kind of like a kidney bean with the back arched and the limbs held rather lower than it. This is most prominantly seen in bandicoots and wombats. Actually this posture can also be observed in mustilids like otters and ferrets. Henk told me I ought to dissect a possum, but I haven't been able to lay my paws on one yet and I don't fancy going out there and shooting one like many Tasmanians do here. I haven't had time to comb the road for roadkill so far. Micheal Archer told me that the forequarters of marsupials tend to be more well-built than the hindquarters. This can be observed in the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) in particular but also in the recently extinct Thylacinus cynocephalus. This is a carry over from the fact that when a marsupial is born, it is very underdeveloped but it does have strong forearms to pull itself through the mother's fur to the pouch. We are more likely to see this feature in Thylacoleo carnifex.