Oil on a piece of shale, with digital lighting and blending.

 This image is currently featured as my 2008 blog banner on The Flying Trilobite, and is also available in my reproduction shop. 

I wanted a rockier look this time, and painted using more greys and browns. And always naples yellow! I painted the shale with clear gesso so the oil would not soak into the porous stone and cause the colours to dust when dry. I painted the entire stone, to better colour-match the fossil on the surface.

I tried to add more shadows this time, to make it pop a little more into 3-d.