failed attempt

I'd spent a lot of time checking source materials for a few illustrations. Much of the material was from public domain sources, in particular The Outline of Science from 1922. Illustrations at that time were grayscale, with a lot of line drawings, steel engravings and lithographs. The illustration at hand was a classic portrayal of divergent evolution: the forelimb bones from four different species laid in similar positions so the similarity in bone structure could be seen.

After looking at the grayscale renderings, I got the idea that a sketch of the different animals interacting–using the illustrated forelimb–would be an interesting and effective way of labeling the species of each limb.

I did a quick sketch so I could see how it would work. I was actually picturing hand drawn limbs in the sky as well, but before I got that far I realized that it was too colorless, too antique in style, and too juvenile for the use at hand. What a waste of pixels. There are only so many in a box, and I'd used over 160,000. So I used it in my blog.