As with most artists, Emily Willoughby, has been drawing, sketching and doodling since she first learned to pick up and hold a pencil. Her early “works” mostly focused on animals, especially predatory mammals, dinosaurs and birds. Despite her love of drawing, she intended all throughout her childhood to be a scientist, and she graduated in 2012from College with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology. In the late 1990s, her childhood interest in paleontology had been rekindled by the discoveries of Sinornithosaurus and Sinosauropteryx, the new feathered dinosaurs that came out of China. She has always loved birds, and has taken her time to learn about the evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and birds. This was really fascinating to her and acted as an enormous inspiration for getting back to and illustrating dinosaurs.
Her first notable inspirations in paleoart while in high school were Luis Rey and Gregory Paul: She loved the bright liveliness and painstaking accuracy in their works. At some point in the course of her work, he decided that pursuing paleoart as a fusion of art and science was the best use of her abilities and interests. A solid scientific background and a strong passion for the arts have been a huge benefit for her when it comes to reconstructing the animals to get images that are as accurately as possible. The starting point for her reconstruction is often a skeletal diagram, if there’s none, and then she examines the original research and any published fossil photographs. From there, she also does her own research.
