DIP (doodle in progress)

Wow three days in a row, I've been doodlin! It's past 4am and I should be sleeping so I can head down to Marin around noon for lunch, but I started doodlin this, and really wanted to make a quick painting pass on it as well. I also wanted to play around with possibilities for what the young of the creature looks like.

I'm thinking more reptilian now (I think I prefer terrestrial egg laying). I'm also thinking that this species also spends time caring for its young rather than leaving them to fend for themselves at birth...so the young are floating nearby, watching mom or dad hunt below the surface, also watching and learning how to swim. Up to a certain age, the young would be too buoyant to be able to dive and swim underwater (like a baby otter). The forearms are even less developed in the young, being proportionally shorter almost like those of a T-rex or raptor, and on land, would move around more on their hind legs til they reach a certain stage of their life when their forelegs have grown longer. This also means the young rely much more on a kicking action with their hind legs to swim...like a duck. The adult shows how helpful the webbed feet are in maneuvering underwater and making quick turns. If they need to swim in a relatively straight path and want to go faster speeds, they tuck in their legs to make themselves more streamlined and swim with a side to side motion (see a gator, croc or marine iguana), and make minor steering with its forelegs. Anyways, it's 4:30am...enough dorking out for now.

I'll probably make another better painting pass and clean up some linework once I get back up to Roseville Thursday evening..as I'm going down to SJ Weds for our BTR meeting....but I may just work on my animation for that project rather than painting....or I'll do both and alternate projects! So if any of my BTR groupmates are reading this...see you Wednesday! Everyone else, see most of you soon once the semester starts!