The palaeontologist Dr William Elgin Swinton (W E Swinton to you) is perhaps best known, in the context of popular books about dinosaurs at least, for works published by the Natural History Museum (or the British Museum (Natural History) as it then properly was) that featured artwork by Neave Parker. I reviewed such a book back in 2011, a rather dry affair filled with strange ideas that must have seemed a little outdated even at the time. However, it’d be…
Time for another round of How to Keep Dinosaurs, a book written by Robert Mash in 1983 that would prove very handy for anyone who might find themselves stuck in a James Gurney-esque fantasy world. For those who missed the first post, the 1983 edition features a series of really quite charming colour illustrations by Diz Wallis and Philip Hood, with monochrome cartoons provided by William Rushton. This is in contrast with the more common 2003 version, which just featured…
Here’s another book found through sheer serendipity while browsing charity shops with a friend – Prehistoric World, written by Richard Moody and published by Hamlyn in 1980. That means it was published a few years after another Moody-authored book that I reviewed in 2019 – A natural history of Dinosaurs – and it recycles a fair few illustrations from said earlier tome. No matter – there’s plenty of unique material here to make it worthy blog fodder, not least because…
Our sixth episode is all about legendary palaeoartist Luis V. Rey! We discuss some of his most eye-catching artwork, as it appears in his art compendium Extreme Dinosaurs (2001). Then, Marc and Niels speak to Luis himself, as he shares many of his trade secrets, anecdotes, his surprising inspirations, his artistic philosophies, his future projects and much more. A must-listen for all Rey fans! In the News A new open-access paper by Novas et al compares the shoulder girdles of…
It’s the triumphant return of The Giant Book of Dinosaurs, everyone’s fifth or sixth favourite children’s dinosaur book from the 1980s to be written by Mike Benton. As we’ve already examined the book’s theropods, let’s turn now to the lesser dinosaurs that pad out the rest of this irritatingly proportioned book – starting with the sauropodmorphs. As I mentioned last time, this book’s slightly too large for my scanner, so I’ve taken some photographs instead – therefore, these images might…
Back in the early 1990s, John Sibbick’s artwork for the Normanpedia (that is, 1985’s The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, authored by David Norman) was simply everywhere. There was no escaping it. Pick up a magazine – Sibbick. Box of chocolate-coated biscuits – Sibbick. Breakfast cereal – Sibbick. Naturally, the ubiquity of Sibbick’s gorgeously painted, but rather idiosyncratic, illustrations from the mid-’80s resulted in a huge number of imitators and outright copycats – there was even a mysterious company apparently named…
There is nothing better than getting your hands on a forgotten, but important, volume of vintage palaeoart, and, folks, palaeoart doesn’t come much more vintage than this. The work featured today precedes Burian, Zallinger and Parker, but in many ways was ahead of its time. When you think of “stylized” palaeoart, you might think of modern figures such as Raven Amos, Johan Egerkrans or our own David Orr, but this book shows that even in the early 20th century there…
There are certain books that you’ll be absolutely certain you’ve seen before, but just can’t quite place where or how. This was just such a book for me. T. R. (Tyrannosaurus rex) & Friends was published in 1988, and would’ve still been hanging around in bookshops when I first got into dinosaurs as a child, only 4 or so years later. When reader Elsie Swann sent over images from TR&F, the distinctive illustrations instantly rang a bell, but I didn’t…
Welcome back, at long last, to the wonderful world of vintage dinosaur books authored by Professor William Elgin Swinton, typically credited as simply W. E. Swinton. A Scottish palaeontologist who had a berth at the London NHM before moving to Canada, Swinton is probably best known among palaeoart aficionados for writing an official NHM book on dinosaurs, featuring Neave Parker artwork, that was reprinted again and again – long after the science in it had been rendered completely obsolete. I…
Let’s finish this thing. I know that everyone loves ’90s Sibbick as much as I do, and is never, ever bothered by the ‘Vintage Dinosaur Art’ series featuring art that’s so relatively recent. And let’s not forget that Herman Diaz went to all the trouble to send this one over from the States. Therefore, there surely won’t be any complaints. Surely. Look, here’s a comparatively obscure Iguanodon piece. The above is one of the few pieces featured in My Favorite…
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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.