Microraptor Takeoff

This is a complete remake of an old picture of mine, and is hopefully the last full picture for this creation/evolution book, though I know I've been saying that for a while. It's very interesting how much the scope of the project has, well, evolved since 2008.

This painting is, obviously, a depiction of Microraptor gui gliding down from a rock. It is a rock and not a tree branch because (in my opinion, at least) there is not yet enough evidence for the idea that Microraptor was arboreal, so it's possible that it didn't spend very much time in trees at all. Here it is chasing Pompiloperus, a species of early Cretaceous Jehol digger wasp. Insect-chasing was unlikely to be something that Microraptor did often, but as we can learn from All Yesterdays, animals commonly do things they don't do commonly, if you know what I mean.

This is old news at this point, but the main impetus for deciding to redo the old drawing was the Microraptor color study, which revealed a few finer points of the animal: that its long-assumed headcrest was more likely to be an artifact of smushed feathers in fossilization, that at least some Microraptor had a pair of long tail ribbons extending back from the fan, and most notably, that the animal's feathers were iridescent, perhaps shiny blue-black like a crow.

There seems to be some debate at present about whether Microraptor's legwings were typically held perpendicular to the metatarsals or more in parallel when gliding, so I painted them somewhat intermediate - a likely position for takeoff, I think.

This represents probably over 100 hour of work and is entirely hand-painted in Photoshop CS4. As always, a huge thanks to ~Agahnim for endless support, critiques and suggestions.

Be sure to buy the book if you want to see this in high-res!

This will be my last upload for 2012 (perhaps my last ever, if the Mayans are right ). May 2013 be full of many featheries!