Episode fifty minus one is finally here, and we’re back looking at some non-traditional forms of palaeoart! Gemma, Marc and Natee discuss the beloved animatronics made by the Dinamation company in the 1980s and 1990s. Then, Natee and Gemma interview the unsung Sean Hennesy, whose dinosaur comics under the name “Speed Thief” combine art with comedy. We discuss how cartoons can inspire curiosity, and how a little bit of humour can make the knowledge go down better. Is dino animatronic…
While John Sibbick Normanpedia knock-offs were pretty ubiquitous in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the illustrations in this book just might be unique in combining classic Sibbickisms with a more John McLoughlin-like, monochrome, stipply style. A rather obscure little volume very kindly sent over from the States by Herman Diaz, The Life and Death of the Dinosaurs was published in 1990 by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Audubon Society, written by Joseph K Slap (great name), and illustrated by Elaine…
By the popular request of a single commenter, here’s yet more All About Dinosaurs, written by Rupert Oliver, illustrated by Bernard Long, and first published in 1983 (with this edition arriving in 1990). I conveniently forgot that said commenter (Andreas Johansson) enthusiastically responded to the promise of more non-dinosaurs that I might have made, and have instead mostly scanned a number of further dinosaur illustrations by Long. Hurrah! We’ll start with this Corythosaurus, for it actually serves as the frontispiece for the…
Here’s a title that might seem familiar to you – perhaps because I reviewed a completely different book of the same name back in 2014, but more likely because it’s about as generic a 1980s retro-a-thon as one can get. While the Dinosaur Renaissance was very much underway, producing some of the most memorable and iconic (sorry, but it’s true) palaeoart of all time, anyone growing up at the time was far more likely to have their image of dinosaurs…
You know, I’ve only done one Vintage Dinosaur Art project in the entire year of 2025? Granted, it was the mammoth, three part project on Marie Hubrecht at the Lyceum, the results of which are used in her biography, but still. It’s time to crank it up a notch, and the best way to pick up the pace is to scale back the size of the projects. Let’s do a cute children’s book. Dennis Nolan (1945-2022) was a painter in…
By popular request – and by that, I mean literally a single person asked for it – here’s another little look at Dinosaurs, published in 2000 as part of Kingfisher’s My First Encyclopedia series, although all of the content dates to 1994 (and it shows). As the last post featured a lot of work by Ann Winterbotham, it’s only fair that the work of the other illustrators gets an airing this time. Don’t say I don’t spoil you, Andrew McLeod. While…
Right then – who remembers this one? Hopefully quite a few of you, as it was originally published in 1990 in hardback as part of the Young World series, with this paperback recycling appearing in 2000. It may well have been translated into other languages, too (Agata seems to remember a Polish edition). It’s just one of the hundreds and hundreds (probably) of kids’ books about dinosaurs churned out by well-known palaeontologist Michael Benton while on his coffee breaks in…
Who’d like some more Rosewarne? In my last post on The Reign of the Reptiles, looking predominantly at illustrations depicting contemporaneous animals in prehistoric landscapes, I mentioned that there were also a great many illustrations of individual animals isolated against white backgrounds, and that I’d consider a follow-up post if anyone actually read that far and wanted to see them. Well, someone did! BrianL left the following comment: The smaller illustrations in The Reign of the Reptiles, like the Dimorphodon…
Graham Rosewarne was an artist whose work greatly elevated my beloved Dinosaurs! magazine (published by Orbis in the 1990s), alongside that by the likes of Jim Robins and Steve White. Unfortunately, books featuring work of his that isn’t just recycled from Dinosaurs! can be a little difficult to come by. I was therefore quite pleased to happen upon The Reign of the Reptiles in The Warehouse Antiques & Collectables while over in Norfolk (a shop we definitely didn’t just visit because it’s adjoined…
After a mere 12 years, it’s time to bring the Dinosaur Dynasty series to a close with the, er, penultimate book (at least according to the order presented on the back cover). If you’d like to look over the set in the correct order, I’ll list them at the end of this post. For now, here’s A Closer Look, published (as with all the others) in 1993 by Highlights for Children in the US and Watts Books in the UK, and…
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Chasmosaurus belli silhouette in custom bulleted list by Scott D. Sampson, Mark A. Loewen, Andrew A. Farke, Eric M. Roberts, Catherine A. Forster, Joshua A. Smith, and Alan L. Titus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sourced from PhyloPic.