Let's Ring in the New Year with "Along the Moonbeam Trail"

As a fellow admirer of crows once sang in a song that has been drilled in the tooth of my memory since high school, maybe this year will be better than the last.  God I hope so.  I at least intend to blog more, when I can; anything that strikes my fancy and is also too weird and/or wonderful NOT to post about.

Case in point: "Along the Moonbeam Trail".  This is a short silent film recently restored to the best of the editors' abilities (here's hoping they find the ending).  I'd like to thank Tyler Greenfield for posting a clip on Twitter because it's honestly astounding that I've never seen it or heard of it.  It has everything!  It is not my Entire Aesthetic (for one thing, I'd have more than one [1] major female character and she'd do more than being a Deus ex Machina), but it's about as close as a movie from this time period could hope to be:

Everything about this is great but I'm torn between the random witch, the "pterosaur" who's really one of the first movie dragons, and the stegosaurus and his cute skink-tongue.

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Art of the Day!

I painted this back in 2018 and I'm reposting it here to bring this wonderful magical energy into 2021.  Happy New Year!

Let's read Dahlov Ipcar's _The Wonderful Egg_!

I am genuinely upset that I am just now learning who Dahlov Ipcar was.  Here is a woman illustrator who lived right in my backyard and whose art has the beautiful colors of Mary Blair, the stunning patterns of M. C. Escher, and the whimsical creatures of both.  She passed away recently at just shy of 100 years old and I'm just now learning about her.  So it goes.



But never mind that now. I know about her now, and my life is the better for it. And in my research, it turns out that Ipcar wrote and illustrated a dinosaur book. The Wonderful Egg was originally published in 1958 by Doubleday and Company Inc.  This reproduction was published in 2014 by Flying Eye Books, and it is as close to the original edition as possible.



I have to say, this is as good a reason as any to write a book about anything.



So this is very definitely a book about dinosaurs for children in the late 1950's.  The palette is brown and green because Real is Brown and, between dinosaurs and all those cartoon turtles and alligators, there is something in the human brain that just wants big reptilian things to be green.  The appearance of the various animals is dubious, but I'm willing to let it slide because I just love this art!  Click for big.



The book sets out to find the identity of a mysterious egg - eggs being the one given commonality between every animals that lived in dinosaur times.  I know, but we're going to ignore it for now.  Look at this jolly Triceratops!  He's pretty remarkable for the time, walking fully upright with tail and head held high.  I want to ride on him.



This Stegosaurus is a little dated but I love him so much!  That smug smile! 



These Pteronodons really are awesome for their time.  The one in the back is a little "Flew right off the set of 'Fantasia'"-ish, but the fellow in the foreground has a proper beak and everything.



I'd have sworn the Ornithomimids in the background came from a book written decades later.  The one in the front is a little flopsy in the tail area, but I like that he's about to munch on some tasty artichokes.



I really have nothing to add to this dude except that of all the 50's Tyrannosauruses I've ever seen, I think this guy is my favorite.  He is at least in the top percentile.



We get a montage of hadrosaurs including this deeply-odd-to-modern-eyes Parasaurolophus.  I do like those pink paws though.



Now I know Mosasaurs in reality looked more like a lizard trying it's damndest to be a whale, but look at this guy!  This is the best old-school toothy sea-dragon Mosasaurus I've ever seen.



And in staggering contrast, the wonderful egg finally hatches and we have ourselves an Archaeopteryx illustrated as a proper bird in 1958.  That's amazing!  Heck, there are recent depictions of the poor critter that cannot shake the "lizard with feathers" cliche.  This is beautiful!

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Art of the Day!



I've been so taken with Ipcar's work I just had to do a Master Study.

Let's Watch "Bonehead Detectives of the Paleoworld" and Get Steamrolled by the '90's!

Little Pete welcomes you to 1997.



Okay, honestly this isn't so bad.  It is very definitely made in the late '90s, and it has that distinctive slightly obnoxious 90's educational kid show-ness going on ("Editor, your one job is to make sure the little brats watching this never get bored ever.")  But it's a pretty good, if dated, introduction to paleontology.  We're not in the "Throw dubious CGI up all over everything" era of paleo documentaries yet; instead we meet paleontologists working in the field or showing specimens.  It's a nice change of pace.

Still, "Man-dude"...

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Sketch of the Day!

Let's Finish Reading the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder!

Continuing our journey through the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder written by Dr. Michael Benton and published by Kingfisher books in 1992. The color illustrations are by Jim Channell and David Holmes, and line illustrations are by Kevin Maddison and Ralph Orme.  As a few readers have mentioned, some of the illustrations were featured in Orbis Publishing's Dinosaurs magazine.  I've previously experienced one of the massive compilations of that magazine and boy was it an adventure.

Anyway, look at that Oviraptor! Look at it!



As I said before, Ornithopods come off very badly in this book. This ugly-ass Parasaurolophus is a low point.



While it's nice to have a (not horizontal but still) bipedal Prosauropod, this is all I can see:







Is it me or is Pliohippus here downright sinister-looking? Like something horsey and unpleasant from Celtic folklore.



There's something super cute about these overly beaky Protoceratopses.



I think I used that Freak Deer gif too soon...



I'll admit part of my inordinate love for Therizinosaurs (or Segnosaurs) is based on the fact that nobody had any idea what to make of these guys for years. Freaky fish-guy Segnosaurus is one of my favorite largely forgotten paleoart memes, but in this book it takes a back-seat to this family tree:



Ahahaha, oh wow.



A fairly jolly-looking Styracosaurus, though he seems to have been drawn by someone who had only a vague idea of what the beast looked like.



Ah, Supersaurus. Again, this page pretty much speaks for itself.



And the Syntarsus illustration that led to me finding this book again. What's up, old buddy?



And finally, we'll end our journey with these... less than majestic-looking Tyrannosauruses. Those limbs...

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Sketch of the Day! I've given it some thought, and I have realized that of all the "You really had to be there" moments I've ever experienced on the Internet, Twitch Plays Pokemon is at least in the top five "You REALLY had to be there"-est.  (We'll never forget you, Zexxy.)

Let's Keep Reading the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder!

Continuing our journey through the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder written by Dr. Michael Benton and published by Kingfisher books in 1992. The color illustrations are by Jim Channell and David Holmes, and line illustrations are by Kevin Maddison and Ralph Orme.

We're confronted by a pack of extremely 80's-looking Deinonychosaurs. These guys are not nearly as fascinating as the accompanying Deinonychosaur family tree graphic, which is a relic from the days when you could be suspected of being part of this family if you happened to have large claws. Behold!







You're looking good there, Gastornis.



Moving away from dinosaurs for a moment, we have this Dimetrodon, who looks positively cuddly. Like an ugly-cute puppy.



Here's Gallimimus sporting a very odd-looking beak...



And Hadrosaurus sporting seemingly no beak at all. She's anatomically off anyway, but that head...



Honestly, Ornithopods, like this parroty Hypsilophodon, make out pretty bad overall in this book. Brace yourselves for this next one:



Those hands...

Here are a couple of full-text pages that kind of speak for themselves. Though the first one at least solves a mystery from an earlier post.





Finally, I want these guys to star in a children's book entitled, The Grouchy Ichtyhyosaurs:



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Sketch of the Day! Cute Monster Girl style Medusa for Sketch Dailies:

Let's Read the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder!

It feels like it's been forever since I did a Vintage Paleoart post doesn't it?  I have a sharp-eyed reader to thank for this one.  Over at DeviantArt, Spongebob Fossilpants correctly identified an illustration from my Syntarsus post as being from the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder written by Dr. Michael Benton and published by Kingfisher books in 1992.  I ordered a new copy of the book right away, because this was my go-to dinosaur reference book for many years.

Let's jump right in.  The color illustrations are by Jim Channell and David Holmes, and line illustrations are by Kevin Maddison and Ralph Orme.  According to the copyright notice in the book, some of them date back to 1988.  That might help explain a few things, for example, this:



Do you remember a time when we used to classify big burly theropods as Carnosaurs and little wiry theropods as Coelurosaurs?  Cause this book sure does.

Note also the odd silhouettes for Prosauropoda and Ornithopoda, as well as Segnosaurs.  The latter is a topic for another day. 



The book is arranged in alphabetical order and has a nice balance of popular and unpopular animals illustrated.  And they are all very weird looking, even by the standards of late-80's/early-90's dinosaur books.  Acanthopholis looks a little embarrassed to be here.



As does Albertosaurus.  He's basically drawn here as "A T. rex, but smaller.  Except not really that much smaller, if we're to believe that scale graphic."



And here's good old Allosaurus in full on "A T. rex but with more fingers" mode.  Man, poor Allosaurus.



Here's a truly strange one.  Euoplocephalus confidently identified as Anklosaurus.  I distinctly remember a shift in dinosaur books where they tended to swap out Ankylosaurus for (correctly identified) Euoplocephalus as their token ankylosaur.  And I can't help but suspect it's because Euoplocephalus, while harder to pronounce, is way easier to draw.



Archeopteryx strutting her stuff and showing off the creepy little hands growing out of her wings.  Because that is totally how avian wings work.  At least she isn't a Sparkleraptor this time out.



Turns out Avaceratops probably did not look like a thing like this outside of being a smallish ceratopsian.  What really got me with this illustration, though, was that beak!  We're going to be seeing a few dinosaurs with crazy-looking beaks in this book.



Good old Quadrupedal Baryonyx! I can't get over how bizarre this looks in hindsight.



Reminder: all big, burly theropods are Carnosaurs. If you want to draw a specific genre, just swap out the heads and hands and maybe add a horn or a sail.



Poor Ceratosaurus suffered terribly from that method, didn't he?  Where are your teeth, buddy?



I admire how adamantly old-school this Coelophysis illustration is. The dragging tail, the vaguely creepy snout, those dainty hands and feet...





I will leave you with Supposed Giant Murderbeast Deinocheirus. Because there isn't anything not to love about this.

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Sketch of the Day! Here's a Heffalump for Sketch Dailies: