A symmetrical rhino-like alien

Another commission for the generous J. M., from Robert Reed's Great Ship universe, the depiction of a bulky, rhino-like alien with a curious "twin ended" symmetry. Here is how it was described in the story:

The alien’s body was also its head -- a cylindrical affair, without a preferred front or back. The upper half of the head was littered with milky white eyes that looked everywhere. One mouth was between the front arms, the other mouth in the rear. The rectum was in the belly region, a tidy pile of wastes still warm on the ground below him. The creature’s dirty hide would have looked natural riding any rhinoceros, but his power and those massive bones belonged to a world with crushing gravity.

One of the (not) rhinoceroses was healthy, standing tall on four legs. She saw him at a distance, and he saw her. His powerful body wore crisscrossing belts and four arms. One pair of arms came from each end of the body. The posterior arms had small busy hands that worked with shifting emblems on some kind of crystalline control panel. The creature’s front arms were thicker, the hands more robust, and those hands wove their fingers together, creating a bowl with the palms.

I created the following sketches based on these paragraphs.

I saved time by drawing only one half - and then "mirroring" each sketch in Photoshop:

This final version was chosen by my patron - and I went on to produce a detailed, final rendition.

I printed out the chosen sketch, overlaid a sheet of semitransparent paper went to a nice, cool cafe, and just drew, drew, drew...

I scanned this image, and digitally added screentones and colour.

Finally, I added in the "semantic plumbing" - describing what each detail of the anatomy had evolved for.

Another commission, nicely done. Thank you all for supporting me on Patreon, and beyond. Please let me know if you want your creature concepts illustrated with this detail of artistic detail, and scientific plausibility.