Let's Read _Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved_

What a fantastic book Naish and Barrett's Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved is!  It is a fine introduction to these fantastic animals that I love so much.  If I could afford it, I'd buy copies for every family I know.  Most of the information in the book will be new and mind-blowing for them.

Most of the information wasn't new to me, so the selling point for me was those incredible illustrations.  The book is packed with art.  I can't express how happy I am to see the work of artists I first encountered online in a big beautiful glossy book.

Best of all, we have here a book about dinosaurs where birds are included like it ain't no thing and therefore, this is a book about dinosaurs that does not end at the K/T extinction.  Goodness, this is the dinosaur book I've wished for since childhood.

Oof, that cover though... >_<

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Art of the Day!

A tiny frog with a big, big voice to round out Janphibianuary.

Time for Part Four of the Bookshelf Tour!

These next two shelves are... eclectic.  They've got nearly all my nonfiction after all.



Predatory Dinosaurs of the World: A Complete Illustrated Guide, Gregory S. Paul - Still the most-referenced dinosaur anatomy guide I have. My copy is practically loved to death.

The Dinosaur Heresies, Robert T. Bakker - The classic.  Still a must-read.  She isn't shelved yet but I've got Raptor Red around here too.

The Reader's Digest North American Wildlife, The Editors of Reader's Digest - This kind of has a cute story behind it.  It was my grandparents' field guide and Grammy gave it to me before she passed.  Yes, it's outdated like crazy, but it's still not a bad reference and by golly it's staying in the family.

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle, Thor Hanson - Gorgeous book that simplifies a surprisingly complex subject.

Picture books by Michel Gange, Tiffany Turrill, and Bill Peet - All are very nice.

Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic - Not much to say here, I've loved these books since childhood.

Retro Hell: Life in the '70s and '80S, from Afros to Zotz, The Editors of Ben is Dead Magazine - I've seen a lot of "Oral history of the late 20'th Century" books but this is my favorite.

Future Evolution, Peter Ward and Alexis Rockman - Got this for the title expecting something akin to Dougal Dixon's books. It's very much not that, but it's worth a read for anyone interested in speculative biology. Speaking of...

The Snouters - Harald Stümpke and Leigh Chadwick - The classic tongue-in-cheek speculative biology.

All Yesterdays and Cryptozoologicon 1, Darren Naish, John Conway, and C.M. Kosemen - Spectacular speculative art of animals real and imagined.

Expedition - As I said before, Barlowe rules and his books are essential.  I've got his Guide to Extraterrestrials and Guide to Fantasy on another shelf.

A Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and Other Winged Dinosaurs, Matthew P. Martyniuk - Beautiful guide and such a wonderful idea you wonder why it hasn't been done before.

The complete Field Guide to Little Known and Seldom Seen Birds of North America collection, Cathryn Sill and John Sill - I've been planning a long post about these books for a while. Maybe this year...?

The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of Animation Design, Tod Polson and Maurice Noble - Haven't had the chance to properly read this yet but it looks fabulous.  Looks like the focus is on design and layout, making this more valuable than just a collection of Noble's art, though that'd be enough.

Magic Color Flair: The World of Mary Blair, John Canemaker and Mary Blair - Outstanding, must-have collection of Mary Blair's art and design.



Picture books by Chris Van Allsburg, David Wiesner, and Maurice Sendak - All are outstanding.

Hark! A Vagrant Collection, Kate Beaton -  If you're unfamiliar with this comic, it is adorable and hilarious.

A Creative Companion, SARK - OK, so SARK is a little "woo-woo" as the TetZoo crew would say, but I haven't found another "get that imagination going" book that worked for me as well as this.  Your mileage may vary.

Legendary Northwoods Animals: A Farcical Field Guide, Galen Winter and John Boettcher - Terrific woodcut-style illustrations highlight this guide to mythical North American animals.

Cartoon Animation, Preston Blair - A must-have. I'd even go so far as to say this is the one animation/cartooning instruction book you really need.

Puddles and Wings and Grapevine Swings, Imogene Forte and Marjorie Frank - Dated but excellent arts and crafts instruction book with tips on (to borrow a phrase) raising a Wild Child.

Crafts and Hobbies: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creative Skills, the Editors of Reader's Digest - Another book I "inherited" from my grandmother. It's a good all-around reference guide.

Tetrapod Zoology 1, Darren Naish - A fine collection of some of the earlier articles on Naish's terrific website.

My Year of Flops, Nathan Rabin - Print collection of the very funny former Onion AV Club feature.

Inside Disney, Eve Zibart - An essential for the Disney theme park geek's library.  Insightful and fascinating.

Dragons, Leonardo's Notebooks, and Peterson's Birds - A small selection of economical art books I've collected over the years.

And, of course, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus, Douglas Adams.  Happy belated Towel Day!

And right next to that, the most beautifullest thing in this world, space for more books!

I'll be taking a little break from the Blog, but I'll be back in July.

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Sketch of the Day!


More original "Final Fantasy" weirdness

The Bookshelf Tour Part Three!

Art books, reference books, and picture books this time, as well as some books I already mentioned in previous posts.



Jan Brett's Christmas Treasury - I love Jan Brett's art and this is a very nice omnibus of her charming Christmas-themed picture books.

Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation, Charles Solomon - Outstanding, must-own art book and condensed history of (mostly American) animated shorts and features, with a few stops along the way to briefly discuss animated commercials, music videos, and special effects.  Starts with "Gertie the Dinosaur", ends with "Jurassic Park", and has a wealth of animation art throughout.

Your Favorite Seuss -Basic, but good, collection of art from Dr. Suess' classic picture books.

After Man and The New Dinosaurs, Dougal Dixon -The first of many speculative biology books!  I've reviewed both books before and while they are dated, they are essential for the science-fiction illustrator's collection.

The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe - Criminy, I need to show more love to Barlowe on this here blog.  We'll run into his better known books later, but this is a very nice overview of his art and career.  It makes me long for a book showcasing all his creature designs for films, though.

Gnomes, Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet - Essential, gorgeous book.  I love the world-building so much.

Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee and Good Faeries, Bad Faeries by Brian Froud - Faeries is yet another must-have for your illustrator's library.  It's gorgeous and inspiring.  Good Faeries, Bad Faeries is a fine companion.

Arthur Rackham, James Hamilton - Haven't had a chance to properly read this one yet, but it's a very nice collection of Rackham's illustrations.

Mythopoeikon, Patrick Woodroffe - A former library book I discovered at my college's book sale and it blew me away.  Great psychedelic art.

Since the World Began: Walt Disney World - The First 25 Years, Jeff Kurtti - An essential part of any Disney theme park nerd's library.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds: The Definitive Reference to Birds of the World,  Dr. Christopher M. (ed.) Perrins - Found this giant, beautifully illustrated book in Buck-A-Book and it's been in my library ever since.

The Encyclopedia of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide, Fred Cooke and Hugh Dingle - An illustrated animal encyclopedia is a must-have and this one's pretty good.



And here's a pile of picture books, any one of which I'd recommend heartily.  We're almost finished with the tour!

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Sketch of the Day

The first "Final Fantasy" continues to be strange.

In Which the Bookshelf Tour Continues!

More books!  Here comes shelf #2:



That's All Folks: The Art of Warner Bros. Animation, Steve Schneider - Once upon a time, there was a Warner Bros. Studio Store in my local mall, right across from the Disney Store.  And it was actually far more awesome than the Disney Store, because it sold original animation art.  It also sold this very nice art book, which can be found for dirt cheap now and is a must-have.

Disney's Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse, To Beauty and the Beast, Bob Thomas - I got this beautiful book at the Animation Gallery, the proverbial gift shop you'd exit through after experiencing the original Magic of Disney Animation at Disney MGM Studios (curiously, the gift shop is still there in essentially it's original form).  Note that there are two editions; this is the older and far better edition which chronicles the making of "Beauty and the Beast".  That section of the book alone is worth hunting it down; getting a nice concise history of the Disney studio with it is icing on the cake.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals and The Encyclopedia of Monsters, by Jeff Rovin - I got these two at good old Buck-A-Book and, as with the aforementioned Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals, I'll be keeping them until newer and more accurate options ever appear.  These two books are crazy extensive, and I've never quite found anything like them.

The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars, John Cawley and Jim Korkis - Similar, though smaller in scope, to the above Jeff Rovin encyclopedia.   These were among the first books to try and catalog every animated character, so I can cut them some slack.  There's a nice selection of art and information about failed projects involving the characters, but it'd be very nice to have an updated book.  This one only goes as recent as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and it's a little jarring not seeing "The Simpsons" or "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". The complete text is online at Cawley's personal site.

Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia and Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia, Carol Rose - Never realized how many Encyclopedias of Weird Stuff I had.  These two are very good and I highly recommend them.

The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon, W. J. T. Mitchell - A very, very unusual book I (luckily, it turns out, since this is very hard to find) picked up at an antique store just based off that intriguing title.  It's an analysis of dinosaurs in human culture and I might have to re-read it and give it a full review someday.

Traditional Tales From Long, Long Ago Hardcover, Philip Wilson - Very nice collection of Celtic folktales with charming illustrations.  Plus my copy came with that radical bookmark.

Our first run of picture books!  We've got some Chris Van Allsburg, Janell Cannon, and a stray Berke Breathed.  More on the latter in a bit.

Fairy Art: Artists & Inspirations, Iain Zaczek - Another art book I've yet to read, but this is a very nice collection of classic fantasy art.

Voyage of the Basset, James C. Christensen and Alan Dean Foster - The illustrations in this book are outstanding, almost on the same level as Dinotopia.  The story... ehhh...

The Katurran Odyssey and Animals Real and Imagined, Terryl Whitlatch - I love Terryl's creature designs like crazy and I dearly wish she had a proper omnibus of art.  These are pretty good and we'll see The Wildlife of Star Wars later on.

Dinotopia, James Gurney - The complete collection.  Need more be said?  These are essential.







The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson, and The Bloom County Library by Berke Breathed, and others - My three all-time favorite newspaper comics.  The omnibuses are essential if you are a fellow fan.  You'll notice I also have Breathed's picture books and the three Outland collections, Larson's There's a Hair in my Dirt! (on it's side), as well as the Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book and (on it's side) the Prehistory of the Far Side.  Both are easy to find and essential companions to the complete collections.

Next week:  We take a break for Kill, Refurb Marry.  Then, NEXT next week, more books!  Nonfiction books for the Nonfiction God!  Reference books for the Reference Throne!

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Sketch of the Day!

"Skies of Arcadia" reminds me of "Treasure Planet" except weirder.

In Which I Give You A Tour of My Bookshelves!

For my birthday this year, I cleaned my bookshelves!  This is a Big Deal!

Seriously, I follow a lot of blogs by other illustrators and the one thing we all seem to have in common is breaking out in chronic literature, as in the above wonderful Arnold Lobel poster.  Now that my books are as organized as they are probably ever going to get (which means that they are actually in bookshelves; I really did have piles of books all over the place), it seems like a good time to give you, dear readers, a tour.  This is going to take a couple of posts and table-breaking photos.



Going from left to right (this shelf refused to photograph well thanks to the light seeping in from the adjacent window):

Jim Henson: The Works, Christopher Finch - This is one of the first art books I owned and it has spoiled me rotten ever since.  Loaded with concept art and history, this is a must-have.

Sesame Street Unpaved, David Borgenicht - Nice companion to The Works and very similar in format.  Plus you can currently find it for dirt cheap on Amazon.

Chuck Amuck and Chuck Reducks, Chuck Jones - Even if I wasn't such a Chuck Jones maniac, I'd consider these books essential. They're packed with concept art, anecdotes, and drawing tips.

Imaginative Realism and Color and Light, James Gurney - These books together have a wealth of information for painters. I don't paint very often, so I appreciate them more as a collection of Gurney's artwork.

Various Anatomy for Artists Books - Hey, remember these guys from the very earliest days of this blog? Wow, that takes me back.  Specifically, I've kept Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Anatomy, Ken Hultgren's The Art of Animal Drawing, Fritz Schider's Atlas of Anatomy for Artists, and a little later we'll be seeing Eadweard Muybridge's essential Animals in Motion, Ellenberger and Davis' Atlas Of Animal Anatomy For Artists, Eliot Goldfinger's Animal Anatomy For Artists: the Elements of Form (it was on sale), and Katrina Van Grouw's The Unfeathered Bird.

Character Animation Crash Course, Eric Goldberg - I've been referencing it more than I thought I would when I first reviewed it.

Paleoart Galore! - OK, let's see here. We've got The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of DINOSAURS and Prehistoric Animals, at least until an updated reference of every known prehistoric animal comes along, Mark Witton's beautiful Pterosaurs, Henry Gee and Louis V. Rey's beautiful beautiful Field Guide to Dinosaurs: The Essential Handbook for Travelers in the Mesozoic, Gregory S. Paul's Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, William Stout's awesome The (New) Dinosaurs, the two Dinosaurs: Past and Present exhibit catalog books (I haven't read them but my succinct review of this wealth of classic paleoart is awesome), and Dinosaur Art: The World's Greatest Paleoart. And there's more on other shelves...

The Art of Maurice Sendak, Selma Lanes - I haven't been able to properly read this yet but it's an excellent collection of Sendak's art and since you can find copies for under ten dollars, it is a must-have.

Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo, Chris McDonnell - Here's the first series-specific art book I've found that's as good as the two aforementioned Jim Henson art books. It's a must-have for fans of "Adventure Time" and is packed to the gills with concept art, interviews, and trivia.

Next, more animation, comics, and children's books.

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Sketch of the Day!  The first "Final Fantasy" is a little strange, it turns out.

_Iconic 2_ Illustration Process

Recently, I got an email from the Comic Artist's Guild asking if I'd like to contribute to the upcoming anthology Iconic 3. (The answer being, yes of course I would.) And that reminded me of something incredibly important that happened during my busy autumn that I can't believe I forgot to write about:  I've been published again!

I have an illustration tucked in among the back pages of Iconic 2. As far as I know, the book will be available at both Boston Comicon and New York Comicon this year. (Currently, the book is unavailable online but I will certainly let you know if this changes. And if you're wondering, my art is also... somewhere... in the One Million Giraffes book.)

Now I could just show you the page with my illustration on it, but where's the fun in that? Instead, for those of you who have or wish to score a copy, I'll walk you through the process of making the drawing.

In early 2010, I was asked if I wanted to do a "Pin-Up" illustration of Grendel for the Iconic 2 anthology. The discussion was pretty lively and by the end of it, I'd whipped up the MSPaint thing you see above. (I don't remember what the unicorn was about either.)

Now here's the thing about drawing Grendel, something that's plagued both professionals and silly little amateurs like me: In the whole of the epic poem, there isn't a decent description of what the heck Grendel actually looks like. About the only things we all have to go on are:

1) He's a big monster.
2) Who eats people.
3) And lives in a cave.
4) And is vaguely humanoid. Maybe.

People have illustrated the brute as everything from a troll to a dragon to a mutant Crispin Glover. Let's not even get into the many bizarre takes on his mom. Anyway, I went for Troll-Grendel for no more significant reason than the fact that Trolls are fun to draw.







These early sketches were just me working out the initial character designs. It's a little hard when you know exactly what you want to show the character doing, but haven't yet got a hold on what he should look like. As you can see, one idea is more monsterish and the other is more humanlike. Now if I had to do this over again, I think I'd push the humanlike version further, since looking at it again, holy crap that's terrifying! In the end, though, I went for more of a compromise between the two ideas.





It required a bit of research though. So here are some sketches of baboon jaws which became the very very initial sketch of Grendel's handsome face.

Now around this point, I remembered that my portfolio is a little heavy on... pretty things. And cute things. And so I did my best to do my own tribute to the illustrations of Stephen Gammell. And if you don't remember who he is, here's a reminder.

Yes, he's the person who somehow had the ability to draw things right out of the demented, vaguely remembered visuals of a nightmare. His illustrations for the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series ruined many a childhood, and it's honestly kind of surprising that they got published at all seeing as they look less like literal interpretations of the stories and more like the stains and smears and scribbles of a madman. (It's honestly not very surprising that new editions of the books have new and much less interesting illustrations by Brett Helquist whom I can't help but feel bad for given the nostalgia for the old artwork.)



With all that said, I... will be the first to say I don't know if I succeeded there. But here's the final drawing, as-scanned, before I did the final cropping in Photoshop. Yeah, I don't think those little plants were a good idea either, looking at them again. Neither was sticking my signature on that bone toothpick.



And finally, here's the version I sent off to the publisher. Hopefully I am totally wrong and that eye will be appearing in the nightmares of children everywhere.

In Which Trish Reads _Vegemorphs_ So Adam And Ifi Don't Have To

So, here is a thing that exists:

This thing that exists is the creatively named parody, Vegemorphs, written by Leif E. Green (son of a...) and published in 1998 by Troll Communications. And it is assuredly and objectively the SECOND-strangest book I have read that attempted to cash-in on the Animorphs series.

Right off the bat we get a pretty dead-on parody of the famous Animorphs opening, "I can't tell you my first name - or my last name either. And I can't tell you where I live. But I might be lying in your refrigerator's vegetable bin or in the produce section of your local supermarket right now." This is Kale Kyle the leader guy. Rounding out the rest of the cast are Carrot Cary the wacky smart guy, Olive Olivia the... however you'd categorize Cassie I guess, Tomato Tommy and Radish Randi the other two (literally, they're here so that there can be five humans in the cast), and the evil Jerkks. It's that kind of parody.

By the way, it's 1998 and Kale and company "like to wear funky clothes, listen to alternative music, and do crazy things." They also hang out with old ladies in a Bingo parlor. Yup.

It's on the way home from playing Bingo that the gang runs into a giant flying mushroom that is covering a farmer's field with fungal spores. Shortly afterwards, they meet Prince Brassica, the talking broccoli and the wise and brave ruler of the Vegetable Kingdom. The Prince informs the kids that certain otherwise ordinary plants are as intelligent as humans but are unable to speak to normal humans. They are extremely rare because they live most of their lives underground and the few who venture to the surface risk getting eaten. They are also at war with the Jerkks, evil fungi who want to infect everything alive on every planet they land upon, and they are losing badly.

But Prince Brassica has a new plan. He will use his magical salad dressing to give his new human friends the ability to transform into giant talking vegetable-people who will better be able to fight the space-fungi.

I promise you, I am stone-cold sober right now. (At the time of writing, I mean.)The kids agree to all this because I guess being a talking vegetable is at least more exciting than playing Bingo. It's worth quoting Kyle's description of Newman's Own Escafil: "I felt tart and tangy, crisp and cool, hot and spicy, crunchy and mellow - all at once... It was like I had been all mixed up - and now everything was mixed right. I had been tossed."

Kyle's salad... has been tossed...

AAAAaaaaanyway. So for those of you wondering if turning into a talking vegetable is the worst kind of Blessed With Suck, it... well, it isn't the WORST kind, but it's close. You can smell a vegetable and then transform into a vegetable-person, but you can also make your clothing invisible, turn into a normal vegetable, shoot a magic beam of vitamins and minerals at people, and transform other people into talking vegetables because...??? If you are wondering, we're not told why you can turn into a tomato or an eggplant if the magic supposedly only works on vegetables. Oh, and of course there is a time limit. Stay a vegetable past the "recommended cooking time" and you're stuck like that. Wee. (For the record, a character does ask whether that means "steamed, stir-fried, boiled, or microwaved" before getting his question shot down.)

Enter the villain: his name is Fun Gus. Of course it is. And he is a Rubrum fungus that can turn into a giant vegetable. And he dresses like Urkle. And he drinks celery juice made from his enemies. And he holds evil secret meetings called the Snorings, where people go to eat mushroom soup and be infected by fungi in their sleep. And he stinks. In fact, he and his followers' favorite battle tactic is to swarm all over their opponents and make them sick.

The kids escape the battle and run home. And in the morning Kyle wakes up to find that Cary has somehow entered his room and has turned into a carrot-person. Cary then turns into a normal carrot and talks about how awesome being a carrot is and how he actually wouldn't mind being a carrot forever and could Kyle hop downstairs and get some salad dressing and pour it all over Cary's carrot body and oh God what? WHAT? WHAT?!?

Thankfully Kyle's mean older brother arrives before things get wicked awkward and since he is wearing tacky clothes and is suddenly obsessed with animation (something I have to point out because I am me) he has obviously been infected by the (sigh) Jerkks. Specifically, the dreaded Streptococcus or Strep Throat bacteria. One of (*sigh*) Fun Gus' other favorite tactics is to turn fungi and bacteria which are normally harmless, like Trichophyton, evil and super-virulent. I was previously unaware that the fungus that causes Athlete's Foot is more often than not mostly harmless. This is a hell of a context in which to learn that.

So the gang gets together and practices turning into vegetables and turning other people into vegetables and endive right into stalking bad guys to get right to the root of why they can't leaf the Vegetable Kingdom alone peas kohlrabi nasturtium and - sweet mother of Gregor Mendel there are so many vegetable puns. Like, an entire Xanth novel's worth of awful puns in a little over a hundred pages.

Anyway the gang causes some chaos in the local salad bar where they meet with Prince Brassica again and he explains their new plan. They will invade the next Snoring as vegetables with anti-fungal cream smeared all over themselves, hijack a delivery truck full of anti-fungal cream, and then zap everyone with their vitamin and mineral beams.

I just wrote that, right? I just actually wrote that.

Well, the battle goes surprisingly smoothly, and is even helped along via Deus ex Machina, a big thunderstorm that washes away all the evil fungus. Fun Gus goes underground, presumably shaking his fist like an 80's cartoon villain, and the Vegetable Kingdom warriors are at the ready whenever he returns in the sequel that will never happen. The downside is that Cary is now a carrot permanently, but he's now living among the Vegetable Kingdom warriors and is happier than he has ever been.

Repeat: CARY IS HAPPIER ABOUT BEING A F***ING CARROT THAN TOBIAS EVER WAS BEING A HAWK WHICH, just as a reminder, IS NOT THE GODDAMN ROOT OF A GODDAMN PLANT AND CAN F***ING FLY!!! Wow.

So there you have it, I guess. For the curious, a version of the book with a different, spooky cover and credits is available at Amazon. It's worth visiting the page for the comments alone.

Now, since I think I am spent, who wants to tackle these things or these things?
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Sketch of the Day

Here is a squirrel:

Holiday Hangover 2012!

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a great holiday, cause now we're in for 352 more days of people freaking the eff out because they don't understand Mesoamerican culture at all!

So for the first post of this new year, let's see what I got for Christmas. The short answer is, I got tons of books. Which is fine for me, since, as has been established, I am a huge nerd.



I finally have a decent collection of MC Escher engravings, and I got the companion book to Imaginative Realism and the already-read-and-excellent Hark! A Vagrant! collection. Best of all might be Animal Anatomy; I can finally stop annoying the library since I have my own copy.



More art books! I am under good authority that the Don Hahn book is amazing, but I am curious as hell about the Terryl Whitlatch book and Disney Lost and Found.



My cousins got me a lot of hilarious little gifts. That mug in front has a neat hidden secret:



(The one off to the side is meant to be a Deinonychus. Yeah...)
 
Project Feederwatch!

Week of December 25, 2011:

American Crow 1
Tufted Titmouse 1
Black-Capped Chickadee 1
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
Song Sparrow 2
Northern Cardinal 2
House Sparrow 25

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Sketch of the Day!



Sarcastic comics from me watching the New Year's Rockin' Eve Special are the first drawings of 2012!

Let's Look at Models and Draw Fifty Dinosaurs! (And other, weirder stuff.)

So, did everyone have a fun World Penguin Day yesterday?

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.

Next up, the most frustrating book of all...

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Sketch of the Day! Eh, just some random stuff:

But I Don't WANNA be a Hypsilophodon! - Let's Read Some Stuff from a Classroom's Recycling Bin!

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.

Brace yourself for this next one.



That there is meant to be Masiakasaurus.

Take a minute or two, let it all sink in.

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.)
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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...