Western University of Health Sciences

Matt Wedel

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So, here's a cool thing that happened at
[Norwescon](https://svpow.com/2018/04/11/ask-sv-pow-could-you-wield-a-club-made-from-a-dinosaur-femur/).
On Saturday afternoon, there was an autograph signing session. Probably
to the surprise of no-one, a lot more people were interested in having
things signed by the other two guests of honor, [Galen
Dara](http://www.galendara.com/) and [Ken Liu](https://kenliu.name/),
than by me. But happily I was situated between them so I coasted a bit
on the interest they drew. There was quite a bit of downtime in the
two-hour session, so I had the chance to chat with both Galen and Ken.
That was actually a highlight of the con for me -- I was hoping for a
chance to get to know my fellow guests of honor a bit, instead of just
passing them in the hallways as we all went off to our separate
scheduled activities.

Whenever Galen Dara wasn't signing autographs, she was drawing. Makes
sense, right? You probably don't get to be as professionally successful
as she is if making art isn't compulsive. And it was just my luck that
the proximate cool thing around to draw was the skull of *Aquilops* -- I
was signing prints of my [skull
recon](https://svpow.com/2014/12/11/reconstructing-the-skull-of-aquilops/),
and I had along the [reconstructed cast
skull](https://10minuteastronomy.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/deep-in-the-dark-of-texas-the-three-rivers-foundation-messier-marathon/)
that I use for education and outreach. So I had the fairly trippy
experience of watching an award-winning artist at the top of her game
draw 'my' critter.

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As you can see from [Galen's
Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/galendara/), she draws and paints a
lot of skulls, and she spends a lot of time exploring the geometric
underpinnings of skulls. She warned me at the outset that her *Aquilops*
skull would be more impressionistic than photo-realistic -- her
interpretation of *Aquilops* as organic art. I think it looks pretty
great; I have to trace stuff to get the proportions that close on the
first go. And as I recently mentioned in [another
post](https://svpow.com/2018/01/18/the-new-dinosaur-dictionary-mark-hallett-and-the-best-christmas-present-ever/),
it's always mesmerizing for me to see how a visual artist can conjure
form, weight, and texture one pencil-stroke at a time.

Many thanks to Galen for permission to post these pics, and for her
interest in my favorite non-sauropod.


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Publicaciones de Rogue Scholar

What it’s like to watch a Hugo-winning artist draw your dinosaur