My name is Simone Zoccante and I’m an Italian natural history illustrator, graphic designer and paleoartist.
I am a zoology, natural history and paleontology enthusiast since I remember. Parallel to this passion for natural history I developed my art skills as self-taught.
After nearly a decade in the field of visual arts, from graphic design to painting, in 2020 I started with my career as a scientific illustrator and paleoartist.
In these last three years I’ve been working on illustrations for books and for museums, I’ve been holding classes and workshops about natural history and wildlife drawing, and I’ve published books about the art of portraying animals and natural subjects.
I participated to several international wildlife art and paleoart contests and in 2022 my works have been awarded at the “Lourinha Paleoart Contest” organized by the Museum of Lourinha (Portugal), with the mural painting “I left my heart in Pikermi” and at the “Premio Italiano di Paleoarte” (Italian Paleoart Prize), organized by the museum of Montevarchi (Italy), with the painting “Infernum”.
Although I’ve started my career with traditional media, now I mainly work in digital.
I am now specializing in large format paintings, especially mural digital paintings, for museums and exhibitions, but since I’m pretty versatile, I can easily work with smaller formats like illustrations for books and magazines.
In my works I always pay a lot of attention to the environment, especially when there are paleoart reconstructions. Before beginning the drawing, I meticulously study the paleoenvironment (climate, flora and fauna) and starting from those data I reconstruct the scene and the key species which lived there.
Lately I started working also as an independent researcher, on scientific papers, especially about vertebrate pigmentation.
I also collaborate with Diorama Nature, a web project about natural history, as a writer and host in videos and podcasts.
