Camouflage in my opinion is nature's way of implementing the adage:
A survival mechanism where patience is usually rewarded. Plants, animals, and insects both living (and extinct) have found a variety of ways to make stealth work for them. Utilizing their bodies and environments to almost disappear.
A strategy that can be used for both defensive and offensive aspects of survival. Many predators, commonly solitary hunters, opt to take full advantage of whatever benefit camouflage can provide. Tigers and zebras both use black stripes in an attempt to distort their forms on the landscape. Polar bears and baby seals with incredible white fur and nothing but the specks of their noses and eyes to distinguish them from the snow.
What is amazing is that these are by far some of the tamer examples of how animals apply stealth to the natural world. Some animals even change the color of their skin and fur. Although I will only be borrowing some of the more obvious traits for this art piece.
Time to get stealthy - but not too stealthy !
 |  |
|---|
At first glance, you'd look at this and think, this much moss growing on top of any living thing would surely not be good for it. In most cases, I would agree with you. (Right, that's totally where your mind went, haha).
Inspiration for this was borrowed from a real living animal, the sloth. Moss and algae grow on the backs of sloths, forming a little ecosystem - even providing a haven for certain species of moths. One can imagine how slow and lethargic you must be for an additional ecosystem to form on your body. In return, the sloth gets some sweet benefits, like a nifty green camouflage that helps them blend into the trees.
Now, I know, sloths are not dinosaurs. For the sake of our art piece, let's practice a little suspension of reality here. Letting imagination take over, so we can proceed uninhibited by those pesky facts!
OOF that base color.
Trust me. I know. It hurts my eyes too. Originally the color was supposed to be dark green. After some experimenting, it was ironically found that the moss and the dinosaur blended into each other too much.
While great for stealth and camouflage, it does not make for great art. So changes had to be made! Wanting to stick with earth colors, I swapped to this tan brown and decided to go ahead and throw in some primitive shading for the face and neck.
If all goes well, you won't notice this color a whole bunch in the final version. We shall see.
 |  |
|---|
🦋Butterflies, flowers, and fungi, oh my!!🍄
You may be murmuring, I don't see any butterflies. Ohh, But you do. To carry on with our theme of stealth, I intentionally designed the flowers to look very similar to butterflies. Stealth butterflies!
 |  |
|---|
Admittedly some ruggedness was getting lost with all bright and happy flora strewn about- so a scar was added because, well, scars are cool. Especially on dinosaurs.
Throwing in some background foliage for a finishing touch. Perfect for concealing a large predator! Also added some additional butterflies and flowers for some finishing touches.
If you would like to learn more about camouflage in the natural world this article by National Geographic is a great place to start. It even includes photos. You can even find quite a few examples in nature documentaries such as Planet Earth.
Details:
Program: Krita
XP-PEN Tablet & Stylus
Check out my friends and fellow collaborators on HIVE!
Events like: Movie Night, Trivia Games, Poker, and Chess Tournaments!
With the potential to win free $PIZZA and NFTs! Make sure to check out the discord linked above for more information.
@huzzah! The Hive.Pizza team manually curated this post.
PIZZA Holders sent $PIZZA tips in this post's comments:
@huzzah(2/16) tipped @funferall (x1)
You can now send $PIZZA tips in Discord via tip.cc!
Really cool artwork
I'm glad you like it! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! 😀
!PIZZA
Congratulations @huzzah! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s):
Your next target is to reach 4500 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out the last post from @hivebuzz: