Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Usborne Book of Dinosaurs

Whenever I mention Luis Rey in the context of being a palaeoartist whose work I'm rather fond of, I am normally met with a wrinkled nose, an arched eyebrow and an exclamation along the lines of 'really!?!'. Certainly Rey has his fair share of detractors, and one of the most common criticisms of his more recent work is that he's taken leave of his senses in Photoshop, cloning dinosaurs here, smearing photomanipulations there, and generally making a bit of a mess. There seems to be a quite widely held opinion that Rey's work is better when he sticks to paint and pencils. With that in mind, hopefully even the most ardent Rey-o-phobes will be interested in (and maybe even appreciate) seeing some early Rey – from 1993, in fact – in The Usborne Book of Dinosaurs.

The Society of Palaeontology Fanciers

I have this compulsion that occasionally rises up, demands attention, prompts feverish work, and subsides until it sees fit to return. I am compelled to design the kinds of paleontology-inspired apparel, stickers, and whatnot that I'd like to wear. I'm kind of picky when it comes to graphic shirts, you see, and when I visit a big museum I'm always hoping that they'll have designs than hit me in my sweet spot. Let's call it graphic simplicity. If you've been hanging around here, you may remember me sharing such designs here in the past - I Left My Heart in a Prehistoric Age, Dinosaur Hearts, and of course the set of minimalist family crests that I came to call Cladistic Heraldry.

If this kind of stuff hits your sweet spot too, well, I've got some damn splendid news. I recently created a set of designs and I think they're pretty nice. I call the set The Society of Palaeontology Fanciers, and like the other projects I mentioned above, it gives to the chance to proclaim your allegiances to extinct taxa to the whole world.



These are all seven of the first batch. The impetus for the set came when I was doodling, and started playing with minimalistic renderings of stem-birds. I have to say that as I worked on the design above, of a vaguely deinonychosaurish animal, it was freeing to not to have its damned arms sticking out. When it comes to artistic renderings of animals closely related to modern birds, I find I am less and less satisfied with artists staying close to skeletal contours. In my doodling, I came to challenge myself to find a way to an iconic rendering of just such an animal. I didn't want it to be easily confused with a modern bird; or if it was on first glance, I want it to inspire a double take. Once I felt that I'd achieved it, I was in full-throttle design mode and I played with various non-avian dinosaur forms. Each took on a life of its own. One of the fun challenges of these sets I like to do is to resolve drastically differently scaled animals into a cohesive series. Once my dinosaurs were done, I was compelled to do a trilobite, specifically the Cambrian Oryctocephalus.

I'm flattered by the fact that when I do projects like this I get a lot of "do such and such!" or "what about whatchamataxon?" comments. I certainly want to do more. Before I do any more for extinct critters, however, I'm working on a set in hopes of doing a tiny bit to help extant raptors from going extinct. These I hope to realize as genuine embroidered patches which will be sold in the Indiana Raptor Center's new gift shop, and maybe down the line I could even have the capital to make patches of my paleontology designs, as well.

Anyhow, if you're moved to pick up a shirt or two, these are available in the base colors above, as white designs on dark colored shirts, or as black designs on light colored shirts, so no matter your preferred style and color, there should be something to your liking.

Mesozoic Miscellany 64

In the News

Atopodentatus! Atopodentatus! What in the heck is going on with that crazy mug? Brian Switek and Jaime Headden both sum up this Triassic marine reptile and its bizarre split, needle-toothed maw.

Gobivenator isn't as weird as Atopodentatus, but hey. New troodontid from Mongolia. More from Dave Hone, Everything Dinosaur, and Nobu Tamura.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

So, this silver age comic called The Wanderers once featured a dude morphing into a gloriously ugly Deinonychus. For the sole purpose of getting Biblical with a female Deinonychus. When do we get to the point that Hollywood is desperate enough to make this?

Dr. Michael Ryan's Palaeoblog is back!

At the Integrative Paleontologists, Sarah Werning drops some learning... about the blossoming world of paleontology podcasts. Please note that we also added a list of these to our sidebar. Also, Andy Farke discusses dinosaurs and chocolate.

The CBS Sherlock Holmes adaptation Elementary recently featured some consarned black market fossil rustlers. Switek's got it covered.

Dr. Bakker answers a burnin' question about the feet of Dipsy the Diplodocus at the Beyond Bones blog.

Luis Rey's artwork was featured in the closing credits of Walking With Dinosaurs 3D, which is great for Luis... only they didn't like, credit him. At his blog, Rey lays out all of the work that was featured. Also, in case you haven't heard, there is going to be a Cretaceous Cut of WWD3D on its Deluxe Edition 3D Blu-ray, so you may now applaud, hoot, holler, fist-pump, or stoically nod in approval. Whatever it is you do.

Mark Witton wants to write about the crocodyliformes of the Wealden Supergroup, so he's going to do it, dammit. Whether you like it or not!

Matt Martyniuk wants to write about the recently proposed Bohaiornithid clade of enantornithes, so he's going to do it, dammit. Whether you like it or not!

At Paleoillustrata, Stu Pond wrote about the beginning of his life as a PhD student, including much reviewing of literature for his research into Polacanthus foxii. Good luck, Stu!

Trish Arnold is awesome, so she created dinosaur versions of the popular Wuzzles™ characters. If you're not on Twitter, she's reason enough to join.

Paleoart Pick In honor of Stu Pond and his studies, let's go with Polacanthus, shall we? Here's the most accurate one I've been able to find in an exhausting, eye-bleeding twelve hours of intense internetting. It's the work of Bill Swets, a retired fireman in Fort Collins, Colorado, who used to operate the Swetsville Zoo, populated by his own metal animal sculptures. Here's Polly Polacanthus.


Photo © Paul Turner, via Flickr.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Prehistoric Animals (Brooke Bond Picture Cards)

Back when I were a wee lad, I were an avid collector of the various prehistory-themed picture cards that were given away with PG Tips teabags, Jacobs' dinosaur-shaped biscuits and the like. It's a practice that seems to have gone the way of PG Tips' ill-advised chimp-fronted advertising campaigns, but one with a long and noble prior history (with the caveat that the idea stems from the inclusion of picture cards in fag* packets, of course). Teabag peddlers Brooke Bond, who themselves owned PG Tips before being swallowed by sinister corporate behemoth Omnicor...uh...Unilever, produced a number of picture card series back in the day. Prehistoric Animals dates from 1972 (according to my dodgy internet-based research - the album itself isn't dated), and just how well some of the illustrations have aged may well surprise you.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Amazing World of Dinosaurs

The admirable effort of a single writer/illustrator, The Amazing World of Dinosaurs comes to us from the amazing world of 1981. It was a primitive age, when Donkey Kong was the cutting edge in video game entertainment, Bruce Dickinson had only just joined Iron Maiden, and popular palaeoart stood at an intriguing juncture. On the one hand, artists' work still owed much to the classic depictions of 'great fossil lizards', but there was nevertheless a conscious move towards more recognisably 'modern' restorations, spearheaded by the likes of John McLoughlin (who coined the phrase 'great fossil lizard' when referring to the outdated ideas he railed against). But I've said as much before. The Amazing World of Dinosaurs is interesting because it combines the old, the new, and the occasional foray into the bafflingly, spectacularly, book-crashingly wrong.

Tetzoo Time

TetZoo Time logo by John Turmelle, via his DeviantArt gallery.

Thanks to Albertonykus and John Turmelle, there is now an Adventure Time/ Tetrapod Zoology Podcast mashup called TetZoo Time. It's just getting started, so this is the perfect time to hop aboard.

Darren Naish (of the absolutely essential Tetrapod Zoology blog) and John Conway (of the equally essential John Conway's artwork) have been turning out the TetZoo Podcast since February, having released episode 17 today. It's a fun listen, because how could Darren and John casually chatting about tetrapods living and extinct, movies, their publications for Irregular Books, and their various misadventures not be?

As for the TetZoo Time creative team, John Turmelle is also known as ClassicalGuy on DeviantArt and Albertonykus of the Raptormaniacs blog and comic have really nailed the Adventure Time style, including the painterly title cards at the beginning of Adventure Time episodes. The comic is full of little in-jokes for followers of Darren and John's individual work and the online paleontology community. This includes an absolutely perfect Ice King stand-in who will delight fanciers of heretical amateur paleontology.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs and How They Lived - Part 2

Time for some more Fornari and Sergio (see also: part 1), and I think it would be pertinent to begin with what seems to be one of the most fondly-remembered illustrations from this book (based on Facebook comments) - an oversized Stegosaurus skeleton, swarming with diminutive museum workers.

The Visual Effects of Walking With Dinosaurs

While Walking With Dinosaurs might have been an enormous disappointment, the consensus is that it's also an exceptionally pretty and well designed one. Unlike our intrepid reporters Mark and Niroot, I haven't seen it, partially because I didn't want to subject myself to it, and partially because I couldn't bring myself to subject someone else to it either.

That's why the video below, from Wired, is so cool: it gives us a look at the dinosaur designs with a minimum of inane, insulting chatter. There are some minor surprises as well; I had no idea that Parksosaurus and Hesperonychus were in the film. Obscure taxa in major studio releases are one of those things I feel like I ought to support.

Unless it means, say, sitting through Walking With Dinosaurs.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs and How They Lived

Like so many books of its time, Dinosaurs and How They Lived is an intriguing hodge-podge of the old, the new, and the flagrantly copied. By 1988, the texts of books like these reflected (by and large) post-Dino Renaissance ideas of highly active and evolutionarily successful animals. Outside of top-flight palaeoartist circles, however, the art often leaned on the accomplished, but badly outdated work of '50s-'70s illustrators. And John Sibbick.

'Top hat' Deinonychus

Pencil and gouache on recycled paper, 95mm diameter.

Prompted by Marc’s comment on my New Year post, Deinonychus with a ‘top hat’ feathery crest. I began fully intending to do a quick silly sketch, but it took a peculiarly serious turn.

(Note that the face isn't scaly but is skin with a pebbly, scale-like texture, akin to the faces of cormorants or the combs of fowl.)

Enjoy.