The enantiornithine Confuciusornis (male),

For me, these gave meaning to all… years and years struggling to for vindication finally came true with the extraordinary richness of these fossil finds that changed our modern vision of dinosaurs… feathered dinosaurs galore! Also this has been an excellent pictorial exercise that allowed me to do something similar to abstract paintings while sculpting and remodeling the real fossils..

Everything started with three dimensional reproduction in resin of photographs that were sent to me from Brazil. The quality was motly abysmal, especially when confronted with bigger, more complex casts (like Beipiaosaurus) . I had to use every possible sculpture skill with epoxy resin and follow the best photographs of the foossils available.. What started playfully, ended up as a very serious reproduction of a selected series of the Yi Xian and other deposits from the Liaoning Province, including the two most famous specimens of the four-winged Microraptor,

the therizinosaur Beipiaosaurus,

the troodontid/anchiornithid Serikornis and Anchiornis itself,

the puzzling feathered /bat-like maniraptorans Epidexipteryx and Yi qi

and the possible earliest, Jurassic, preceding Archaeopteryx for 10 million years, maniraptoran Aurornis xui. Added is the pterosaur Sordes pilosus (but wthis specimen lacks the bristly coverage it is famous for).

The colour palette I had to deal with was astonishing… No, these fossils are rich in variety of colours… and depending on the light it varies enormously. Trying to reproduce exactly the colour of the stone and all its shades is not easy at all, but it’s enormous fun and entails a long learning process. After all, colours have always been one of my main obsessions.

And getting the feeling of the rock is even more difficult…

I’m trying to not make them look like “paintings”… they are fossils! But not always the results are successful and the amount of detail needed is staggering…. magnifying glass at hand while the computer pictures give the extra helping hand. See and judge for yourelf!

A little more than just a hobby…The process has been painful to say the least… and it’s not quite finished yet!