Styracosaurus Art for a Competition

The University of Utah accepted entries this last month for paleo art for a Dinosaur Billboard competition. At the urging of my amazing wife, I accepted the challenge to produce a physical illustration.

Choosing a dinosaur to illustrate

Competition rules gave artists complete freedom to choose the species to illustrate. As long as the species illustrated was an actual dinosaur, and is based on an actual skeletal structure , they did care. At first I wanted to go with Mierasaurus bobyoungi, a smaller early Cretaceous period sauropod. Once I had a look at the competition template, I realized doing a long neck dinosaur of any kind would be huge challenge. I decided I needed to move on to something a bit easier to fit into their very horizontal billboard template.

Their Legacy: Francis (Frank) Easter Thorup

This is the first in what will be a series of posts about the life histories of some of my ancestors, based on facts gleaned from various sources.

Note that the following post will include some discussion of religion, Polygamy and other aspects of Francis's life some may consider negative. If any of these items bother you, please feel free to just click on, and scan through the images. Also note that views expressed do not necessarily represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its positions and policies. Please refer to the Church's official website if you want to go down that road.

Portrait of my great grandfather Francis (Frank) Thorup, circa Early 1970s. Digital portrait by Aaron D. Thorup. Rendered June 2026.

Medium: Digital
App: Krita
Tools used in App: Paint Brush (RGBa), Layers, Adjustment layers, Erase
Time: Multiple sessions spanning approximately 15 to twenty hours

Timelapse of the painting at the end of this post.

How I came to Render a Portrait of my Great Grandfather Thorup

 "Love you Mom.", as I hugged the woman who brought me into this existence known to latter-day Saints as mortality. "Love you too.", she responds to me, her fourth Son. This had been our standard departure routine pretty much since the end of my mission, for the Church, in 2002. It stands as a reminder that my emotional bond to this woman, despite life's ever-changing vicissitudes, will remain ever present. Just as I turn to walk out the door, "Wait, Aaron, I have something for you". She hands me two small photos; One of the family cat from twenty years ago; the other, a rather faded color image of my Great Grandfather, Francis Thorup. She quickly explains to me it would be really neat if I did a portrait of Francis and the cat.

The cat, well, I figure it's doable with the help of other sources, and some creativity. The image of great grandpa Francis, on the other hand, was far more interesting in my mind. 

Rendering and learning

As I dove into working the details of his portrait, I began to think about this man, and the details of his life. I knew a few things, but as I worked the digital strokes of his portrait, a desire within myself coalesced in my heart and mind, to come to know more about the life of this man. Francis lived his life; and because of what he did and who he became in the complex reality of my family, he was a small but very necessary part in bringing about my very existence on this earth. If nothing else, this post is a "Thank you!" to him and my God. For without them, I would not be here writing this, nor would I have painted his portrait.

Cassie and Licorice remembrance Portrait, October 2025

 I digitally painted this as a remembrance for two dogs our family grew to love and adore. The dog in the foreground, Licorice, has passed to the great beyond. The background dog, Cassie, is still kicking.

Compositing reference images

I used two separate photos of the dogs, both taken in a similar setting. I then used AI image generation (XeroGen Forge) to create the green blanket Licorice is lying on.

Mount Pleasant Horses

Purchase a print of this at my art store

Title: Mount Pleasant Horses Touching the Sky

Dimensions: 18x22.2 inches at 300 DPI

Tools: Krita, Custom-made RGBa brushes that mimic the feel of oil paint.

Previsualizing the concept

During the Mount Pleasant Independence Day parade I snapped this photo of these horses mounted by local beauties:

After deliberating on whether to use this as is, for my reference image, I decided I didn't want to include the women as part of this piece. I liked the horse, but I also wanted to include clouds. In order to do this, I engaged in some photo compositing. Using another photo which included some puffy clouds and another photo that included a horizon and some far-off clouds with some mid-ground landscape. 

Hard lesson learned about using AI as a reference tool

At one point I utilized Photoshops AI image generation tools to produce the lower portion of the horses. I fully rendered that generation into the painting. After reviewing other reference photos, I came to the full realization that the AI generation was completely flawed. I felt like a fool for taking as long as I did to come to this realization. Lesson learned, and I plan to never again us AI as a tool, except in the most minor cases. So, I finally did what I should have done in the beginning, and I used other references from horses in the same parade to produce the final rendering. I feel I ended up with a much more realistic and pleasing result. You can see the contrast in the progression video or animated GIF I produced, along with the painting. (See at the end of this post).

Haitian Woman and newborn

Early illustration from my newspaper days

I had been working at the Deseret News for about one year when I decided to try my hand at creating an artistic illustration using a pressure sensitive device. This wasn't entirely new to me, I had already owned a Logitech pen tablet for several years already and had produced several personal works with it. For this I decided to take an image which had already been published, draw a sketch on paper, scan the sketch into the computer, then render out a digital painting from the original reference.

Ultimately this was an attempt to show the management at Deseret News (In late 2010, right after a major layoff of a huge portion of the staff) that I had the chops to do illustration work. After creating this and showing it around, no one seemed too interested in the more traditional look. Which is fine. In the years that followed the Deseret News, like every other surviving Newspaper publication, would water down everything with their physical content. Currently you can subscribe to the, vastly reduced newspaper, and have it delivered in your mailbox. But about 99% of us just hit the internet on our mobile devices.

Stephanie Memorial Illustration

Medium: Digital

Tools: krita, using custom digital brushes

Duration: Approximately 10 hrs, over 5 sessions

On February 12, 2025 my cousin Stephanie Fryer passed due to a combination of diabetes and illness. Shortly after her passing my wife suggested I create a digital portrait to memorialize her and her life.

As has been the case with most of my illustrative work from the past 2 years I sought to use digital techniques in the most traditional way possible.

From this I advanced my skills as an artist and illustrator. I also learned how much of her mother Ellen she had within her. Studying every detail of her face, as I worked, helped me to see that clearer than ever. As is the case with all of the daughters of God, she was beautiful inside and out. I look forward to getting to know her better in the next life 

Christmas Newsletter Illustration, 2024

Deciding on what exactly to do this year proved a difficult decision for me. In years gone by the imagery flowed with greater ease, or I already had an image waiting in the wings. Starting around Thanksgiving, after mulling it over for a couple weeks, or so, I finally decided on sharing something that goes well beyond the Christian mainstream. A concept that is alluded to briefly in the Bible, that has an expanded meaning due in no small part to the Book of Mormon and modern prophetic revelation. This Christ centered idea of the Tree of Life is deeply meaningful to me and my family. Every Christmas, not only do I share the story of the nativity, but I also include Nephi's vision of the Tree of Life and its meaning. The ideas engendered in his vision of our Lord and the Tree have become inseparably welded into my heart and mind whenever I see a Christmas tree. For me the Christmas tree is a symbolic representation of the Tree of Life pointing us to God through the living Messiah, even Jesus Christ.

The first part of this post will be about the process and tools I used to create the illustration. If you are willing to stick around, the second half will be a more in-depth explanation of the meaning behind the illustration.