Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs – All Shapes and Sizes

Part of the same Dinosaur Dynasty series that brought us Giants of the Earth and The Real Monsters, Dinosaurs – All Shapes and Sizes was published in 1993 by Highlights for Children in the US and Watts Books in the UK, and was one of the several popular dinosaur books that Dougal Dixon wrote one evening while engaging in lively conversation and playing a game of darts down at his local. (Which is not to imply that it’s bad, merely that he seemed to churn them out at an absurd rate.) Most importantly for our purposes, it was illustrated by the superb Steve Kirk. You know what that means – funky stripes!

Velociraptor (which is what this animal surely is) doesn’t appear inside, but makes for a striking cover star, especially as it’s decked out in very fetching aposematic colours. While very dated now for obvious reasons, this is top-tier stuff for the time, displaying careful attention to detail, particularly around the skull. As ever, Kirk is highly skilled in making animals’ stabby claws appear suitably shiny, sharp, and vicious. It’s also imbued with a real sense of life and character, appearing noticeably alarmed. Perhaps it’s just noticed that the child about to read the book is rather careless when turning the pages. (I’m not projecting at all.) It’s not as cool as cover as Monsters‘ leering tyrannosaur, but that’s pretty much impossible to beat.

Although claiming to be a guide to “unusual dinosaurs”, it’s not entirely clear on what criteria an animal was deemed to be ‘unusual’. In Ornitholestes‘ case, perhaps the fact that it had a skull that was “very short, which is unusual for the smaller meat-eating dinosaurs, and its lower jaw was deep and strong” was enough to warrant its inclusion. It doesn’t matter a great deal when we’re treated to another glorious illustration by Kirk, depicting an animal tossing a crocodylian hatchling up into the air (presumably in preparation to swallow it whole, as per the caption). While obviously scaly – and in possession of an erroneous nose horn – this piece has still aged remarkably well, doing a wonderful job of portraying the overall form of the animal. And the feline spots are nifty.

A better contender for the title of ‘unusual dinosaur’, particularly in 1993, is Elaphrosaurus. The head of this lanky-legged ceratosaur is still unknown as of 2025, but if it was anything like Limusaurus, it probably wasn’t chasing down dryosaurs…not adults, at least. You’ll note that Kirk has cleverly obscured the head in this illustration. It also features a wonderfully expansive backdrop; from this vantage point, a huge, almost boundless floodplain expands before us, and closer inspection reveals sauropod dinosaurs wandering around among the trees. It’s quite wonderful. Our perspective is low to the ground, giving the chase a real sense of dynamism, while the background creates an immersive sense of a huge Jurassic world (so to speak) that these animals inhabit. It almost looks inviting, although I’d be worried about the not insignificant chance of an allosaur attack.

A rather different sense of scale is provided by Kirk’s Compsognathus, which is clearly indicated to be rather small. Which, I suppose, is also what makes it unusual, or rather made it unusual in ’93. You’ll note both the artistic skill in depicting that reflection, and the fact that the animal only has two fingers per hand, which was the style at the time. (It was subsequently established that the third finger was there, just a little slender and prone to getting lost.) While the Compsognathus‘ stripy ‘n’ dappled green skin is fairly restrained by Kirk standards, it’s still beautifully done, and those claws appear suitably sharp.

Who doesn’t love an illustration depicting dinosaurs in the rain? In our latest podcast episode, we talked about Sibbick’s piece depicting plateosaurs in the rain, as featured in WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH. This has somewhat of a similar feel in that the animals don’t appear to enjoy being caught out in the open, although the storm is less dramatic, and it’s entirely possible that that eagle-like bony strut that crossed Hypsilophodon‘s orbit made it appear permanently frowny. (No doubt it was always being told to cheer up, but IT’S JUST MY…I mean, its neutral face!) The background here, featuring rain-battered foliage, is really quite beautifully done, and I do wish I could see more of it without all that text getting in the way.

I’d wager that the individual on the left is modeled on a mounted skeleton in London’s Natural History Museum, which can probably still be seen there today, if you’re lucky. (I hear they’ll be overhauling the dinosaur gallery in the near future, and it’s not before time. Use that sweet sweet hedge fund money. Maybe put Hypsilophodon in the Main Hall along with Mantellisaurus?)

Psttacosaurus remains a pretty strange-looking dinosaur to this day, so I’m sure it warrants inclusion here. Plus, and as much as I’m getting bored of saying it, Kirk’s illustration isn’t bad at all. I’m particularly enamoured of the suitably flared jugals, curling fingers, and subtle skin folds on the animals’ foot, clearly based on careful observation of living reptiles. And it’s all spotty and stripy, and red and yellow and black, and looks very snazzy. It also has a very intense look in its eye, an entirely convincing look of what we would perceive as reptilian stupidity…from our biased mammalian viewpoint, of course.

Stygimoloch was certainly a highly unusual dinosaur back in ’93, and still commands attention to this day, even if one considers it to be ‘just’ a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus. This unusual illustration of a reclining individual is reminiscent of Greg Paul’s depictions of relaxed theropods, perhaps to too great an extent; I do wonder if enough room is given for the animal’s large, herbivorous gut and wide hips. Still, it’s a beautifully painted piece, and a welcome depiction of a pachycephalosaur indulging in a non-combative behaviour – shades of All Yesterdays, 20 years early. And I like the foliage. Damn it, Steve, why won’t you paint something bad? They’re going to accuse me of blowing smoke up your fundament.

You’ll remember scaly 1993 Velociraptor from the cover; here’s scaly 1993 Oviraptor, pronated forearms and all. Oh, but what a fantastic illustration! An Oviraptor caught in the act by nighttime photography, only it’s entirely painted, of course. The glowing white eye is suitably sinister, but the lighting overall is very well done here. Particularly noteworthy are the gleaming layers of keratin on the animal’s crest, clearly painted with reference to extant birds like hornbills and, of course, cassowaries. While a modern remake of this would be fantastic, I’d be proud to hang the 1993 piece on my wall as is.

And finally…Avimimus, which does fit the bill (so to speak) as an ‘unusual dinosaur’. In the early ’90s, you could seemingly either have a feathered Normanpedia-style version with an otherwise rather generic toothy theropod look, a more ‘modern-style’ but entirely scaly look (as here), but no combination of the two. It’s extremely telling that this reconstruction has such a ‘plucked chicken’ air about it, a la Barlowe’s Oviraptor. It’s very much of its time, but also particularly good for its time. If only a few speculative feathers had been allowed here, we’d have ended up with an extremely prescient reconstruction for 1993. It’s a piece that stands on the cusp of a paradigm shift in dinosaur science and reconstruction (and I’m quite sure I’m using that term justifiably), and makes one wonder what it might have looked like if painted even 5 years later.

One must also wonder if Steve Kirk could ever be persuaded to come back to the world of dinosaur art. Come on, Steve, you know you want to…