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Continuing our magical journey through The Humongous Book of Dinosaurs! I should have mentioned this last week, but I am aware that many readers have a lot of nostalgia for this series. As you may have noticed, I haven't said much about the text. This is due to there being a serious case of text/illustration dissonance (and I have nothing but the deepest sympathy for the illustrators; it thankfully hasn't happened very often to me, but I wasn't kidding when I say sometimes you get the equivalent of a tiny notecard describing what you are supposed to draw). Please do not take offense to my snarky attitude towards the illustrations. Thank you.
You have to admit, my fellow paleoartists (or paleontographers if you want to get all fancy-pants - though you should read Traumador's epic deconstruction of the term in the comments below before you do; if anyone wishes to discuss this issue further, please do so here), that part of the appeal of drawing dinosaurs is very simple: sometimes you get to depict giant murderbeasts fighting and maiming each other. The many, many illustrators of the oftentimes truly insane HBoD took unusual glee in such things. Check it out:
My favorite part of this piece is how mildly peeved that tyrannosaurus looks after being gored right in the privates (even though this tyrannosaur appears to be totally neuter, because this is a children's magazine).
You often see 80's Deinonychosaurs ganging up on animals twice their size. But you don't see them having the privates to tackle a big ceratopsian... ever, really. I think this is the first time I've seen such a thing.
A very 80's Spinosaurus messily chows down on an Ouranosaurus carcass. I'm more distracted by the huge, fat ass on that spino. Damn, that is a big fat ass! Maybe the artist is partially going by the "spine was really supporting a giant hump" theory?
I love this painting of a very weird ornithomimid because it shows a paleoart meme from my childhood that you almost never see anymore: supposedly egg-eating dinosaurs sloppily splattering and dribbling around the delicious yolk of the egg they are apparently trying to eat. We'll see a lot more of this later.
And here's Ornitholestes making off with a hunk of... somebody. At least he isn't chasing a flyer around for once.
Another very weird ornithomimid is taking care of that for him.
Next Time: A look at some of our favorite dinosaurs!
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How about this? To liven things up a bit during our journey through this crazy book, I'll share something I just watched recently and is just way too incredible to wait. I give you the lost "Jim Henson Hour" episode, "Living With Dinosaurs"; I'll be serializing it over the next few posts. Do be a dear and watch along with me.
Now, if you're a regular reader, you may remember me discussing how I was a little desperate for dinosaur-related film as a kid. That's why I was so very upset when "The Jim Henson Hour" was cancelled before I got to see this episode. In my mind, and based entirely on the title, it'd essentially have been the same idea as "Dinosaur Revolution" (which, by the way, looks very good).
Within two minutes of finally seeing "Living With Dinosaurs" now, I am unspeakably glad I didn't see it for the first time at eleven years old. Let's begin shall we?
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Sketch of the Day!
Feather studies!
