350000 years ago, just beyond the western edge of the icy Schwarzwald, spring has come to the mammoth steppe. A raven flies over a group of steppe mammoths enjoying a cold bath in the Oos river, while a Megaloceros grazes on some choice plants growing on the riverbanks. With the harsh ice age winter in retreat for a few months, a flock of greylag geese migrates north, a buzzard hunts, and a small pack of wolves observe a herd of steppe bison and some roe deer.
When I decided to do some Quaternary art, there were two specific things I wanted to do: I wanted to set it in spring, because I rarely get to draw flowery spring landscapes, and I wanted to imagine what a real place I had visited had looked like in the geologic past. When you go back all the way to the Mesozoic, no place on Earth would look very recognisable, since even the mountains change wildly over those timescales. But with a setting in the Pleistocene, I could reimagine a place I knew. That place ended up being the last bit of Rhine valley just west of Baden-Baden.
