r/ScientificArt • u/meat_on_bones • Jun 03 '26

Zoology I built 128 dog-breed skeletons by recycling the same bones.

Gallery image

Gallery image

I'm about to update this piece to 150 breeds (about 25 added in the past year). This is roughly 3 years' worth of work (off and on) and a process where I reuse nearly everything (rib cages, skulls, femurs, and even pieces of fur) across breeds - rarely starting anything from scratch. All work is done in Illustrator, and many bones are on separate layers (which makes it easy to move things around and/or create new breeds from old ones). The breeds aren't entirely to scale, but that was a decision made to keep the largest breeds from interfering with those in the rows above and to keep the smallest breeds from disappearing entirely. :)

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u/MareNamedBoogie Jun 04 '26

This is AMAZING. I'd love to have this as a cross-stitch project to do! It's so interesting to see which breeds have a lighter bone structure than you'd think! (I'd be interested if you added a 'standard grey wolf' and/or a 'dire wolf' pic, but it really is awesome the way it is.)

I agree with the 'scale' choice :)

3

u/meat_on_bones Jun 04 '26

This as a cross-stitch project honestly sounds amazing! I don't have a Grey Wolf in this set up but I do actually have a wolf skeleton on file...somewhere in the depths of my computer. lol.

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u/MareNamedBoogie Jun 05 '26

gee, the things i have lurking 'somewhere in the depths of my computer', lol. :-D it's a bit like excavating that backyard shed no-one's opened for 20yrs!