A new spectral bat joins the bat montage (Patreon)

My philosophy on drawing animals these days is that one's illustrations should be novel, and not re-drawings of the works of other artists. Many of the illustrations originally produced for The Big Book - done when I had less grand visions of the final form of this work - were indeed copied from the drawings of others. So where possible I'm correcting this. As you'll know if you've been here for a while, I've drawn many bats for the book, and one of my favourites (it's one of the most spectacular of bats) is the Great spectral bat (Vampyrum spectrum), a phyllostomid that can have a wingspan of 1 metre and routinely eats vertebrate prey. I've written about phyllostomids at TetZoo, in case you haven't seen it...  http://tetzoo.com/blog/2019/4/12/the-new-world-leaf-nosed-bat-radiation 

My original illustration of Vampyrum was copied from an image available online. I used it because it was the only good image I could find of a spectral bat in flight. Here's my drawing... (it was used in previous bat montages prepared for the book).

But, as you can see from the image up top, it's now been replaced. I'm doing new drawings of several other animals for the same reasons.. and thus giving myself more work and slowing things down even further. But I have to, this is important to me, and it will make this book - which is a 'life's work', assuming I ever get round to finish it - better than it would have been. With the new spectral bat replacing the old one, the montage now looks like this...

You'll note that I deliberately made the spectral bat as large as I could. I need to tweak this montage more yet, so this might change.

Right now, I'm busy with the SNAKES section of the book. It's coming along, and I think I have many snakes yet to draw. Stay tuned, thanks as always for your support!