To anyone reading this blog after meeting me at Boston Comicon earlier today, welcome! I'm so happy you decided to check my humble little website out. Every page view makes a rainbow in my heart, it really means a lot you don't even know.
I not only showcase my illustrations and sketches here, I also write (an awful lot some would say) about drawing, animation, film, literature, and anything else interesting that comes up. (For example, right now, I'm in the middle of a vintage paleoart kick.) Note that comments are moderated, but welcome. Some of my favorite older features are listed in this anniversary post.
I'll have my Comicon thoughts after they're organized, hopefully there will be a new post this coming Tuesday, maybe a little later and more off-the-cuff than usual. It is going to take me a long time to sort through my freebies, purchases, photos, sketches, and contacts. As always, I've had a lot of fun and met a lot of really awesome people and exchanged lots of business cards with other illustrators. Illustration isn't a very social career choice, so anytime large numbers of artists get to talk face-to-face is wonderful. (Plus, it's like Christmas 2 if you like to read.)
For those of you standing, please hold on to the handrails throughout our journey and stay clear of the doors. Por favor mantangense alejado de las puertas! For the comfort of others, no smoking please. Thank you, and welcome to our highway in the sky!
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Art of the Day!
Instead of the usual sketch of the day, here's a grab-bag of a few character designs and drawings from observation (highlights from my portfolio in other words). These are all from Flickr, so click the image to see it big:
I'll tell you up front, I wasn't kidding when I said this was the most frustrating of all the books I've reviewed for Retro-Paleoart Month. There may be some foul language ahead. The awful, awful full title of the book in question is Raptors! The Nastiest Dinosaurs, and it's written by Don Lessem, published in 1996 by Little, Brown and Company.
What'd I tell ya?
For those wondering what the big deal is, the maniraptors throughout the book - and this is especially remarkable when you read the introduction and find that the whole impetus is "Jurassic Park" - are exhaustively researched and anatomically accurate. The book does not do the usual "F*** it; let's just copy 'Jurassic Park' again" approach, nor does it contain a single 80's HMNH style maniraptor (big and burly, huge head, skinny little kangaroo hands), like we've been seeing all month. This is unspeakably refreshing. My gosh, they have propatagia (that gross tendon-thing on the leading edge of the wing you're not sure whether you should eat or not). They have propatagia!!!
There's just one tiny little problem...
All of the Maniraptors are bare-ass naked.
And that's a damn shame. A big, damn shame. Because the art is really really good. The painter went all out in making his 'raptors as avian as possible, posing them like badass birds of prey. And then no feathers. Not a stitch (or filament, whatever.)
The "fun" begins right on the front cover. I mean, what do you even do with a book like this? What do you...
Hold the gorram phone. David Peters?!? David PETERS?!?!? Holy crap, David Peters! David Peters, you magnificent bastard!
And yes, it is THAT David Peters (as per a helpful comment in the Nemo Ramjet piece I am about to link to in a couple of paragraphs)! Hahaha, oh, WOW, David Peters...
Hoo. Okay. Some of you probably do not know who David Peters is; I will tell you.
David Peters was once a very accomplished dinosaur artist, but today he no longer paints much. He is now notorious for having some theories about pterosaur anatomy and biology that are... very different. Many would argue that they approach the "This no longer looks like an actual animal that could have actually existed on this planet" level of different. Interpretations of his theories can be seen here and here. Have a strong drink ready.
So now that we know who illustrated the book, that makes some of the maniraptor appearances... more confusing, really. See, Peters' rather controversial methods include interpreting every little mark or stain surrounding a fossil animal as *part* of the animal.
So why is Archaeopteryx naked? Archaeopteryx, the one feathered raptor even the scaly raptor fanboys can't deny. WHY IS SHE NAKED?!? Why why why?
OK, I can't bear to bang my head against the desk anymore, so lets just end here with the funniest illustration in the book:
"Aw! I just bit Marvin in the face!!!"
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: The PaleoKing has a major update relevant to this blog post and I will not ruin the fun by explaining any further. Go there now, dear reader! (And now I have more books to look for.)
ANOTHER UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: Oh Em Gee, just... just read the comments. ----
Sketch of the Day!
Well, older art. Since it needs to be emphasized:
Teal Deer: Naked 'raptors look stupid. They do. You B.A.N.D. types need to get over it. (Addendum: I love you, Pristichampsus.)
(Although looking at this piece, which I dashed off while in kind of an emotional state, I may have to do the George Lucas thing to it...)
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Other Person's Art of the Day!
Phil Tippet has a YouTube Channel, and he has been sharing some of his early "Go Motion" work. One of his best-loved recent uploads is "Prehistoric Beast", which Tippet made to basically show off what he can do with metal, foam rubber, and plastic flowers. This is the first time I've seen this piece in it's entirety and... wow... WOW!
Additionally, some of the stop-motion work of the Chiodo brothers (they're best known for the all-too-brief analogue animated sequences in "Elf") has popped up on YouTube. This sequence is from an educational videotape called "Son of Dinosaur", and it is pretty much the cutest thing ever.
Squee! I want one!
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Announcement: Boston Comicon is this weekend!
Yeah, I think I'm ready for it. I'm not sure when the next update will be, which is why the last few posts have been rather "meaty". Wish me luck!
One overlooked area of old Paleoart is the world of dinosaur models. (Never "dinosaur figurines" or, Heaven forbid, "dinosaur toys"?) A few years ago, I found much of my childhood collection intact and took a few pictures (all the images in this post are on Flickr, so click to see bigger versions).
From left to right, we have models from roughly the sixties, the eighties, and the nineties. The first row probably date from around the same time as a book we're about to explore.
The middle section is mostly made up of Invicta models. I got these in the 1980's when they were still a museum gift shop staple, but it turns out they were produced beginning in the 70's. That helps explain why all the tails are staunchly dragging along the ground. Finally, the three fellows in back are as far as I got in my attempt to collect the lovely Carnegie Collection. (And yes, there is a Dino-Riders Deinonychus lurking in the background; sometimes thrift stores are the best Thing.) Note the differences between the models from different years that depict the same (or similar) animals.
Here's a detailed look at that very strange 70's Tyrannosaurus. I know they hadn't found 'Sue' yet, but it's really hard not to make fun of those little flipper-hands, the dragon feet, the giant crotch, and the shark face.
Which brings us to these illustrations from Lee J. Ames' Draw 50 Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals, published in 1977 by Doubleday and company.
The Lee J. Ames drawings (I am only including the final finished pieces here) are an excellent time capsule of how many prehistoric animals were thought to look *right on the cusp* of the "Dinosaur Renaissance". Here's a rather goofy looking Tyrannosaurus and an Emo Ornithomimid. As you can see, they are of a piece with the models above.
Iguanodon and Styracosaurus with very strange mouths, and a Hadrosaurus who appears to be suffering emotional problems.
And while they are a not-quite-mammal-but-close and a mammal, I couldn't ignore this buck-naked Cynodont and amazingly spry Indricothere.
Our next book in this grab bag is The Crocodiles Still Wait, written by Carol Carrick and illustrated by Donald Carrick. An oddly moving story of a mother crocodile raising her brood in the late Cretaceous period. The crocodiles themselves still look terrific and the dinosaurs...
They have not aged well. Heck, look at this... Troodontid? Ornithomimid? Your guess is as good as mine (I'm going to call him Derpy Claws):
Next up is The Largest Dinosaurs, written by the great nonfiction children's book author Seymour Simon and illustrated by Pamela Carroll.
An overview of Sauropods and their lives. The ink-wash illustrations can get a little strange. You may recognize the above illustration from my review of "Dinosaur Rock". This is basically the image of sauropods I had when I was very young: not big, dopey swamp-dwellers but still kind of goofy and rubber-necked.
As silly as this Brachiosaur is (those feet!), I love the dramatic perspective here:
Finally, and certainly the most unusual book we're going to see today, here are the dinosaur-centric scenes from Life Story, written and illustrated by the wonderful Virginia Lee Burton.
The book is no less than a dramatization of the history of life on Earth, starting with the formation of the seas and going on and on through to modern times and Burton's little house in the Massachusetts countryside.
Obviously, the animals are very stylized throughout, but I love the sheer scope of the book, and I adore Burton's playful folk art.
Strathmore Windpower Watercolor Pad - Fantastic little Sketchbook. It's very short (only fifteen pages), but the small size is perfect for travel, and at just under three dollars at Dick Blick's, it can't be beat. Plays well with watercolors, pencils, and inks.
"9" - So this guy, animator Shane Acker, makes a really awesome short film that gets the attention of Tim Burton, who takes Shane under his sketchy, striped wing fresh out of art school to make his first feature-length film. So this film has a pretty awesome story behind it. The short film in question is fantastic and it is worth renting the DVD just to watch it. The sad thing is, the feature adaptation of the short is not remotely as interesting. The world and the creatures that inhabit it is cool, but the story is incredibly dull, confusing, and obvious and populated with bland, interchangeable characters. On top of that, and this is the mildest of spoilers, you may well rename the film, "Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: the Movie!" Speaking of Tim Burton...
"Alice in Wonderland" - Um... it didn't suck as much as I thought it would, I guess.I wish there was more I could say here. I really do. I can't recommend this film, but I can't hate on it too hard either. Tell you what, it's better than "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". But if I'm going to watch a "takeoff of a beloved fantasy children's book where the hero returns to the magical land and saves it from a new evil" movie, I'm going for "Return to OZ". At least that one's weird as hell.
"Voyage of the Unicorn" - Ever run into an adaptation of a book you liked as a kid that's SO different from what you liked in the book, yet gets so much stuff right, that it just ends up being frustrating? Yeah. (And yes, this is apparently based off Voyage of the Basset; I guess unicorns are a bigger draw than historical puns.)
"127 Hours" - Stop being such a sissy and watch it already. OK, seriously, this movie is very good and is currently running neck-and-neck with "Scott Pilgrim" as my favorite of the past year. (No, I'm not sure exactly why these films either.) My gore-disliking aunt and mom are both crazy about it. You will believe a half-finished bottle of orange-flavored Gatorade that has been sitting in the back of a car in the Utah heat and cold for days and days will look appealing.
"Black Swan" - I told you feathered dinosaurs were scary! But you didn't believe me! WHY didn't you believe me?!? (OK, seriously. Not among my favorite movies this year, but very good.)
"Tales From Earthsea" - I know a little bit about the rather sad story behind this particular Studio Ghibli film although the special features skip over it entirely. The film itself is... decent. It isn't fantastic, but that's only because Goro's father has set the bar so damn high. Also, the Earthsea books (which I have a rather odd relationship with; maybe I'll tell that story later) are turned into a rather ordinary stereotypical fantasy/Anime plot. There are some neat moments towards the end, like an effectively monstrous bad guy.
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, copyright 2010 written and illustrated by Gregory S. Paul and published by Princeton University Press - It is, I will state again, very sad to see a favorite artist of mine who influenced me so greatly suddenly turn into such a... yeah, I'm sticking with douche. (At least a douche is clean; younger readers, it means "shower" in French.) But let's ignore the deluge of controversy Greg Paul has stirred up in the past few months, because I am also sticking with my initial Clint Mansel-scored animated-in-a-rush-past-Midnight reaction. You need this book in your library. For an animal anatomy reference (yeah, I went there), it is indispensable.
And it is also... not quite as good as Predatory Dinosaur of the World. It doesn't have as many anatomical studies, has far, far fewer life restorations, and seems to have fewer skeletal studies (which is especially odd, as this book supposedly covers more species). And, yes, Paul gets... eh... just a little lump-happy. (In that people who misunderstand the Triceratops/Torosaurus thing would bleed out of their eyes reading this book.) That said, I read the whole shebang, cover-to-cover. There aren't many giant textbooks I can say that about.
Ah, Eyewitness Books. The science, nature, and history library that saved many a kid my age while writing reports for school. Their format has been much-imitated, even to the point that part of me could argue that, in many ways, Eyewitness ruined the world of nonfiction children's books. For ages and ages afterwards, the default "style" for such books was, "stark white background, photographs of objects related to the subject, and labels. Labels everywhere." You can see the roots of the "Whatever"-Ology books and their various and sundry rip-offs there.
Eyewitness' Dinosaur editions are perhaps the best-loved out of the whole series. They took the then-unusual approach of using models to depict the dinosaurs. All the models were made by John Holmes, Roby Braun, Graham High, and Jeremy Hunt. The photography was by Andy Crawford, and the drawings by John Temperton and Graham Rosewarne. The book was published in 1993 by Dorling Kindersley, Inc.
The dinosaur models were very up-to-date for their time, but maybe have not aged well. And, sadly, they are each attended by a swarm of labels.
And a few of them depict the dinosaurs from the inside-out. Lord knows why, especially since the form and function of internal anatomy isn't really the focus of the book and is never elaborated upon. And mind you, this was all done before we found Leonardo so a lot of what you see inside this Gallimimus is based on educated guessing.
Now, the Eyewitness approach is nifty but I do recall having a book by them specifically about hadrosaurs, and most of the "illustrations" were just this model photographed from different angles. Yeah.
I am willing to admit that I may be a little obsessed with Deinocheirus' crazy-long arms...
And here's the hand of Baryonyx. You know, if it were out of context and I didn't know much about theropod anatomy, I might assume this was a maniraptor foot and large talon too. This explains some things.
Speaking of maniraptors, here's a familiar face. 80's kids, how sick are you of this guy. (It's Dale Russel's rather infamous model of Troodon, for those who don't recognize it.)
And here is a very strange bust of an oviraptor. I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna say it and you can't stop me. Here we go.
Scaly raptors look stupid.
They do. Look at this thing and the Russel!Troodon and try to argue it. And keep this in mind for one of next week's books...
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Additionally, CHUD.com reviewed "The Land Before Time" as part of it's Childhood's End series (revisiting movies the writers watched as children but hadn't seen in over a decade). If nothing else, it finally explains the title.
Additionally additionally additionally, I just got some more retro dinosaur books from the library, so Retro Paleoart "Month" may go on for a week or so into May. Which is good, as that will give me time to recover from Comicon. (Which is in just a week OMG!!!)
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Art of the Day!
I should probably save this for my review of "Pokemon: White", since it's one of the best things in the game (though this looked an awful lot better in my head):
Happy 4/20 all you smelly hippies! Are any of you hallucinating that you are a different kind of "Hippie"? A Hypsilophodont I mean? Cause that's the subject of today's first book. Man, that was the most forced segway ever!
OK, seriously. Today's first book is Dinosaur for a Day, written by Jim Murphy and illustrated by Mark Alan Weatherby published by Scholastic Blue Ribbon books in 1992. It's a day in the life of a mother Hypsilophodon and her babies. The text is marginally interesting but the illustrations... holy cow!
A few details are outdated (ah, 80's Deinonychuses), but the full-page spread paintings are absolutely gorgeous. I would have taken more pictures but the book is a former classroom title and was falling apart in my hands. There's great, almost Guerney-esque stuff in this book, if you can find it.
Former classroom titles? Yes indeed, today's books were owned by a teacher friend who recently "weeded" her in-classroom science library. This brings up an interesting issue: how often, exactly, should a school go through it's nonfiction book collection? The wonderful Awful Library Books blog has many, many thoughts on this subject. And sometimes it's pretty obvious when a book needs to go:
This is from the book, Usborne Starting Point Science: Where Did Dinosaurs Go? Published in 1991 by Usborne Publishing Ltd. Written by Mike Unwin, illustrated by Andrew Robinson, Toni Goffe and Guy Smith. There is, sadly, no indication as to who did what though.
Aside from these little cartoon illustrations, the art in this book is remarkably generic. The most interesting "Vintage" feature here are the, uh, facts given. For example, the book helpfully informs it's young 1991 audience that all of the dinosaurs, even the little cute ones, were killed off -- but not by flowers.
Also, dinosaurs were "bigger than the lizards you can see today". Yeah.
But sometimes it isn't very obvious that a book is out of date. This painting is from a book with the insta-dated title of New Dinos! The Latest Finds! The Coolest Dinosaur Discoveries! Written by Shelley Tanaka, illustrated by Alan Barnard. Published by Scholastic in 2003.
As it happens, we've learned quite a lot since 2003. The artwork in this book is gorgeous but it's sobering how fast it became outdated. For example, here the artist looks like he is *just* warming to the idea of feathered troodonts.
But then you get to this page about Willo, the little ornithopod that appeared to have her heart preserved within her body. It was recently reported that further testing proved that lump isn't her heart at all. (Sad trombone.) And teachers, this is why we use primary resources whenever we can.
Now, to be fair, the artist probably had no idea what Masiakasaurus looked like, beyond that strange skull. I'm still not clear as to what Masiakasaurus looked like, exactly; even today all the attention tends to be taken by those crazy teeth. And back in 2003, the only thing besides those terrible teeth the mainstream press could report on this animal is the fact that "he's named after Mark Knopfler, LOL Dire Straits really IS a dinosaur rock band hurpf-durpf!"
Tangent: If anyone calls your band (or something you like) a "dinosaur" in order to imply that it is "old and busted" or perhaps even an "epic failure", counter with this:
"Oh, so you mean it ruled the world unchallenged for well over 160 million years? Becoming the arguably most successful and diverse group of tetrapods ever known? And its descendants now rule the skies? (Dramatic pause.) Yeah, f*** you."
Anyway, Masiakasaurus knopfleri. The critter, a basal Abelisaur, probably looked pretty strange in life but probably not *this* weird.
Edit: Zach's comment below reminded me that I could have sworn that there was a recent reevaluation of what Masiakasaurus might have looked like floating around online. A quick Google search and voila! (Link goes to a Dinosaur Tracking article about the paper just in case it vanishes again. Here's the paper itself.) ----
Sketch of the Day! I liked the Parasaurolophus from the art card I shared yesterday, so after some "Pokemon" doodles, I decided to tell more of his story...
For a change of pace, how about a short post about my own artwork?
ACEO stands for "Art Cards, Editions and Originals". They are the size of a standard trading card (ie, a baseball card or card from a trading card game like "Magic"). Since the cards can be sent in a small mailing envelope, ACEOs are a fun and inexpensive way to collect original artwork from a wide variety of artists. They can also be traded at, say, a place where a lot of artists and their fans congregate maybe?
Yes, Boston Comic-con is fast approaching. I want to go for broke and sell some original art there, but I'm astonishingly short on ACEOs. So I'm forcing myself to create an ACEO a day.
More specifically, I'm alternating between a rabbit from 700 Bunnies and a hadrosaur for the upcoming Art Evolved gallery. Hopefully, these subjects will prove popular. Probably going to charge a buck a piece for them, which (after a quick search around the 'net and a little case of Small Name, Big Ego-ism) is a steal.
As an aside, yes, I am using a certain paleoartist whose book I just finished *just* to double-check things like crest shapes, ect. Please don't call the Art Police!
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Off-Topic Soapboxing
Male readers, especially younger ones, I implore you to do something highly unusual: Paint your toenails pink. Do it! Do it for freedom of expression! Do it to help this poor kid feel less alienated! Especially do it to send a message to people who really, really, RE-HEEL-LY need to get a life (they are sold in stores right next to the clues and the over-its).
