As part of his attempt to become a professional paleontologist, Chris decided to examine dinosaur aesthetics. To this end, he distributed a number of drawings of dinosaur skeletons to passersby and asked them to draw the dinosaurs’ exteriors on top. In this way, he hoped to see what kind of expectations people had for the aesthetics of various dinosaurs, and whether those expectations varied by species, e.g., were predators colored in more intense colors than herbivores? The subjects included artists, biologists, and “normal” people over a wide range of ages. This piece was originally installed by showing the drawings side-by-side with an analysis of the decisions the artists made and speculation as to their influences (movies? science books?) and intents.
Skin & Bones II, Skin & Bones III, and Dinosaur Duo are all later projects that similarly allowed the participants to draw or sculpt their own versions of dinosaur exteriors.
The original poster can be seen here.
It was later made into a book which includes all the drawings and analysis. The book features a large fold-out poster, which can also be found at its full size in the PDF.
Photographs of the drawings and installation:
Chris Wildrick 