When we were pre-teens, my friend Ron Keippel and I took art lessons from a woman that everyone called “Real” (short for a longer name that I’ve long forgotten). One day during that time I commissioned her to sculpt a model of the dinosaur Triceratops. She charged me $8.00, which I paid her with my weekly allowance (over many installments).
Around the same time I (with a bit of help from “Real”) sculpted and painted this Tyrannosaurus figure (below). It was at “Real’s” art studio, while taking her lessons, that I also did several oil paintings copied from Charles R. Knight’s work including his depiction of Ceratosaurus vs. Stegosaurus.