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Hesperornis and Co.

I'm so pleased I can finally share my Antarctic Imperial Cormorant illustration for Polar Lights 4! This was a bird I knew little about before I selected it, but I quickly fell in love with their incredible colors and how they contrast against the vivid blue & white of the Antarctic landscape.

Oh.

Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus). Family Cuculidae, order Cuculiformes.

Anthro dinosaurs have tremendous potential.

I don’t have a name for this one though aaa 💔

or reap what you sow

Cormorant Diving for a Star, Clip Studio Paint, 11/11/2025

Finished this piece I have been working on the past few days. Very happy with this illustration, looking forward to doing more original works, or at least I am learning to do more to develop my own personal style.

I worked on this on and off twitch livestreams on twitch.nl/niekstradamus. Feel free to follow me there to catch me working on these live!

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Turns out that finding reference images of birds flying taken from above is quite hard, but I am very pleased with this so far!

Meet the Spectacled Cormorant, Day 12 of Extinct Bird Drawtober!

Pictured with juvenile Alaska Pollock. These cormorants were the largest known and lived in the far northern Bering Sea. Like their cousins, the Galápagos cormorant, they were flightless.

The fishermen on the great lake have no need to waste their time angling. They instead employ their trusty avian familiars to snatch prey straight out of the water. The birds are kept well fed for their hard work.

Done back in the day when I was trying to draw a bunch of Shining Force-like characters. For the second stage, the cormorants would've turned into bird-wyvern hybrids. I only got as far as this preliminary design.

As Above, So Below