Vintage Dinosaur Art: Album of Dinosaurs - Part 2

In our last look at the Album of Dinosaurs, we established that it was a beautifully illustrated book, thoroughly out-of-date scientifically for the most part, but lively and occasionally slightly silly enough to be very entertaining. It features its fair share of Daft Old PalaeoArt Tropes (or DOPATs, as they perhaps shouldn't be known), including any number of animals living an aquatic lifestyle that they don't appear eminently suited to.

As far as DOPATs go, everyone remembers the snorkelling sauropod as the poster boy of pre-Dino Renaissance wrongness. However, just as prevalent back in the day were web-fingered, amphibious hadrosaurs. Borne of a misinterpreted skin impression and a far too literal comparison with ducks, no dinosaur book was complete without a hadrosaur swimming party. It's not to say that hadrosaurs couldn't or didn't swim, of course, but the idea that they were adapted for an aquatic life and primarily fed (with their packed dental batteries) on soft water plants is pretty silly indeed.

Nevertheless, there's something quite lovely about Rod Ruth's illustration; I think it's again in the composition, and the graceful arc of the hadrosaur's body.

Let's not leave the sauropods out of it, though. This rather unusual brachiosaur would be none too happy about that.

There is an admirable attempt made in the Album to flesh the Mesozoic world out around its dinosaur stars. As such, we are treated to plenty of illustrations in which the landscape is packed with foliage, and small animals go about their own business (when they're not escaping the attentions of some goggling theropod). The Struthiomimus illustration stands alongside the Compsognathus piece (see part 1) in having some gorgeous greenery, even if it's not as interesting compositionally. Just as with the Compsognathus, the animals are notable for their Knightian weedy muscles, particularly on the thighs.

Although it can be considered something of a DOPAT now, the ever-nesting-Protoceratops did make sense at the time, even if it eventually became a very tiresome cliché. Ruth's take is unusual in that the Protoceratops adults, which are dotted at different levels around the landscape like they're posing for a moody album cover, don't appear to give a flying Zalambdalestes about their tiny, squishy offspring. Won't somebody think of the children?

Quite a few millions of years down the line we come to Triceratops, the rockingest ceratopsian of them all (and also the last). The scenery here is wonderful; Ruth evokes an unusually chilly atmosphere, and it's almost possible to feel that brisk wind on one's face. The animals themselves aren't too bad for the time, but are still weirdly inconsistent. The individual on the left appears to have a horn emerging from directly behind its eye, while the head of the middle animal seems to be turning into a potato crisp. There's also a niggling sense of the scale not being quite right - those must be some seriously bloody massive bushes back there. Did you notice T. rex sneaking around at the back, too? Do you think he'll get away with that? No chance.

So far, I've only mentioned this book's text (by Tom McGowen) in passing, but it deserves more attention. Each showcased dinosaur is the subject of a factual rundown, naturally, but also a wee narrative detailing its exploits on a typical day. So, Apatosaurus vacuums pondweed like a chump, while Allosaurus flashes its glinting teeth and twirls its moustache while cackling loudly to itself. It's all gloriously dramatic and rather breathless stuff, and like any good writer of children's factual books, McGowen is notably bloodthirsty.

"The horned dinosaur slams into the flesh eater, jerking its head upward savagely so that its two long horns rip deep into the tyrannosaur's belly! The impact lifts the flesh eater off its feet and hurls it backward to sprawl on the ground. Moving forward quickly, the triceratops [sic] jabs its horn again and again into the fallen tyrannosaur's body."

That's one stab-happy Triceratops. The text is further accompanied by smaller, monochrome illustrations that frequently continue the 'story' started in the main image. Naturally, Triceratops is depicted being fired out of a cannon towards a rather limber T. rex. At least it's not ambushing the tyrannosaur in the shower, I suppose.

Happily, T. rex is allowed to have his own way at least some of the time (for in the tradition of pre-1980s dinosaur books, he is surely male). Here, his yoga practice has paid off as he manages to flip over a no-neck ankylofreak like so many pointy pancakes, although that right leg still looks like it would take some work to pop back in. As McGowen explains, presumably while salivating, if an ankylosaur were ever to be inverted like this, then "in an instant the flesh eater's teeth would have been savagely tearing into the unprotected flesh!" He really had a thing for 'flesh'...so to speak.

One of my favourites of the monochrome illustrations is this one, depicting Stegosaurus toppling Ceratosaurus. As noted above, it's a charming continuation of the scenario depicted in the main illustration, as well as being a pleasing piece in itself.

Another of my favourites, but for quite a different reason, is this 'Iguanodon forefoot'. Quite where Ruth found the inspiration for this mutant aberration, I'm not quite sure; it's like a diseased lizard wielding a machete blade.

But I don't want to end on a downer, so here's a wonderful addition to the 'Ornitholestes catching a bird' DOPAT. Ruth's is unusual in that his Ornitholestes hasn't quite caught up with its prey, although it's still stretching out its adorable little arms in anticipation. Just brilliant.

Next week: something else entirely!

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Album of Dinosaurs - Part 1

Not every kids' dinosaur book of the early 1970s featured lumpen and entirely static mounds of flesh dotted around belching volcanoes. Album of Dinosaurs - from 1972 - is a beautifully illustrated (by Rod Ruth) and sizeable book that's absolutely dedicated to dinosaurs being exciting animals. Yes, there's a fair amount of volcanic activity and typically, er, loose interpretations of the animals' anatomy, but this is still a fantastic book for the time.

Of course, in many ways this remains a fairly conventional pre-Dino Renaissance tome - complete with such well-worn and now discredited tropes as the swamp bothering sauropod and tottering upright tyrannosaur, alongside a number of palaeoart memes that still receive the occasional airing today. However, the illustrations have an undeniably bold and lively quality that adds greatly to the impression of dinosaurs being animals worth taking a second glance at. We may still be some way away from flashy display organs (oh yes) and vibrant colour schemes, but it's undeniably engaging material.

The book starts out, naturally enough, in the Late Triassic, where a rather spindly-limbed Coelophysis is busy dashing after the lizard-like reptile Trilophosaurus. Meanwhile, the customary volcanoes are making the atmosphere resemble Beijing's on a bad day. Although this illustration depicts a distinctly active creature, the lizardy muscles remain tellingly Knightian. It's nice enough, but what one really wants from one's old-time dinosaur books is a bit of hot bronto action, and of course the Album is happy to deliver.

Now, what with it being a book that actually listened to its scientific consultants and all, the animal is correctly labelled Apatosaurus. Nostalgia isn't eschewed completely, however, as the illustration clearly depicts a chimeric 'brontosaur', complete with boxy macronarian head and twenty-milkshakes-a-day fatness. Ruth effectively emphasises the animal's great size through judicious placement of foliage and puny pterosaurs, not to mention the fact that the animal's head threatens to disappear up out of frame. The cloudless, solid yellow area of sky at the top draws further attention to the animal's mismatched fizzog. Ol' Bronto has a highly endearing facial expression, appearing rather disheartened by it all. Perhaps it's tired of all those boring, mushy aquatic plants. No one in the right minds loves gloopy plant material, which is why you should stay a good number of paces away from anyone consuming mushy peas with their fish and chips. Those dangerous lunatics...

Just as the bronto illustration makes excellent use of flora in emphasising the subject's huge size, so the Compsognathus illustration is dominated by looming vegetation that dwarfs the tiny theropod. Ruth's composition is excellent, drawing attention to the animal while also giving the foliage plenty of space in which to show off. This is also a wonderful piece for presenting the animal as part of a much larger ecosystem in a way that was quite rare at the time, while its body forms a beautiful shallow U-shape.

Of course, most of the book's illustrations are more conventional 'dinosaur book' fare, with the animals up front and centre. This feeding Allosaurus is obviously based on the famous mount in the American Museum of Natural History, as also brought to life by Charles Knight several decades prior. Noteworthy here are the suspiciously modern-looking crocodilians and grasses, and the way that Ruth has ignored Allosaurus' distinctive horns, as was the annoyingly baffling norm at the time. More positively, the hind limbs are at least nice 'n' meaty, and it's good to see an Allosaurus illustration in a book this old in which it isn't improbably sinking its teeth into the neck of a much, much larger (but of course utterly helpless) lardy sauropod. Oh, and the water looks lovely.

In fact, there aren't too many depictions in Album of Dinosaurs of giant predators having it all their own way; there seem to be rather more of 'peaceful' herbivores teaching them a thing or two about staying away from their spiny business ends. Ruth's Stegosaurus is actually rather good for the time, given its appropriately small head, upright posture and (almost) dead-on number of plates. Its scaly skin texture is also quite expertly painted, and the row of osteoderms are a pleasing touch. Its adversary, Jazz Hands Ceratosaur Guy, doesn't fare so well (hey, at least the nose horn isn't rounded). Nevertheless, this is another painting filled with gorgeous, tiny incidental details, such as the trackways and dragonfly in the bottom left.

Everyone knows that before David Norman et al came along, Iguanodon was invariably depicted standing stiffly upright, feeding from a tree, with its tail dragging limply (and impossibly) along the ground. While Ruth's illustration is indeed dominated by this rather dull and predictable stereotype - note also the obligatory wattle/dewlap that somebody, somewhere, at some point must have invented and everyone else thought was absolutely spiffing, pip pip - there's also an individual wandering along in the background with its tail in the air. In spite of its retention of the perma-flexed elbows, this Iguanodon is surely taking great strides (geddit?) towards modernity. Once again, the trees are fabulous (the background silhouettes!), and look - a cute widdle tortoise! Hope he doesn't get stepped on, or swallowed as a gastrolith.

Sexy Rexy's giving you the eye. For all its strange contortions of anatomy (that torso...what the hell?), there's something I really like about this painting - the murky green tones are suitably forbidding, while the eye is drawn immediately towards the gleaming highlights of the animal's eye and pearly whites. Ruth also realises that the key to making a predator appear sinister is not to remove all the mystery by having it charge at the viewer with its jaws agape - this is a beast that's quietly reflecting you, and clearly pondering its next move. In other words, less is often more, as John Conway recently demonstrated.

While there's a great deal to admire in this book, there's also a lot of silliness (which I hope to explore more in later posts). Ruth isn't afraid to add to the 'tyrannosaurus stooping down so that armadillo-like ankylosaurs can thump them on the noggin' canon. The Ankylosaurus is like an angry pineapple on legs (or maybe just feet), while T. rex's torso is up to its usual laterally flattened, super bendy tricks (in spite of the fact that T. rex had a ribcage like a beer keg). So gloriously retro and wrong, it's really quite adorable - and lovely trees as always.

Next time: more illustrations, including the supplementary monochrome ones, plus a few words on the often quite brilliantly dramatic text. If you thought Part 1 was a bit limp, you're probably right, and apologies. But there's more!