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Protoceratops

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Reign of the Reptiles

Vintage Dinosaur Art September 9, 2025

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…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs – A Closer Look

Vintage Dinosaur Art June 24, 2025

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…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (Ladybird Square books)

Vintage Dinosaur Art January 28, 2025

Say “Ladybird dinosaur book” to someone, and they’ll very likely think of the book illustrated by Bernard Robinson that was reprinted a number of times and spanned the childhoods of multiple generations. (Well, at least two.) I reviewed it all the way back in 2011, so perhaps my review is now as nostalgic for some people as Ladybird books are for others. (Nah, just kidding. I’m not so deluded.) Robinson’s illustrations, while technically superb and highly memorable, were looking rather…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur (DK Revealed)

Vintage Dinosaur Art November 28, 2024

Regular readers (we have some, right?) will be aware that our sole criterion for a book’s inclusion in Vintage (=Old) Dinosaur Art is that it be 20 years old. Consequently, books from the early 2000s have now entered our purview. It was a time when, in the wake of Walking With Dinosaurs, publishers demanded increasing numbers of CG creations in lieu of more traditional illustrations and model photography. Dorling Kindersley (aka DK) very much followed this trend, inserting very dodgy…

Podcast Show Notes: Episode 35 – Snowball and the Raptor Boys

Podcast Show Notes June 30, 2024

We’ve had a month off, but the famous LITC podcast is back in full strength with more fresh news, nostalgic art reviews and exciting interviews! After discussing the new films and documentaries that are coming our way, we review some very English palaeoart from the late 1970s by the unsung Peter Snowball. After that, Natee and Marc interview the Golden Boys of Dromaeosaurs, 3D sculptor Ruadhrí Brennan and returning LITC interviewee Jed Taylor, whose incredible Velociraptor sculpts have set last…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The World’s Wonderful Creatures

Vintage Dinosaur Art February 12, 2024

When looking at books from the years BT (Before T’internet), we must of course always bear in mind that decent reference material was rather difficult to come by, especially for your average jobbing illustrator without privileged access to museums and/or scientists. (And even then, the scientists sometimes just didn’t give a toss.) This explains the proliferation of Knight, Burian, and Zallinger clones – what else were the poor artists supposed to do, if not take inspiration from the greats? Nevertheless,…

Podcast Show Notes: Episode 31 – Mark Hallett and Dragons of Wales

Podcast Show Notes January 31, 2024

Our tremendous trio is back for 2024, but not all things are as they were… mostly they are, though. We get back into the swing of Vintage Dinosaur art, or is that Nostalgic Dinosaur Art? We explore the work of Mark Hallett, the man Marc once declared his Favourite Palaeoartist Ever, as it appears in Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas’ Dinosaurs: A Global View, also featuring works by John Sibbick and Douglas Henderson. Then, Marc and Natee interview Andy Frazer, also…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Prehistoric Creatures (Benwig Painting and Colouring Book No. 6)

Vintage Dinosaur Art December 8, 2023

We haven’t featured too many colouring books on LITC – Victoria Arbour reviewed the Jurassic Park one for us back in 2018, and they popped up a few times in David’s seasonal gift guides (back when he was still doing those), but that’s really the sum of it. I am therefore rather happy to present Prehistoric Creatures, number 6 in the Benwig Painting and Colouring Book series, published by Benwig Books in 1971. Until I find the colouring book full…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (St. Martin’s Press) – Part 2

Vintage Dinosaur Art November 14, 2023

Ahoy-hoy, whippersnappers! I guess it’s been a while since we did part one of the 1990 Golden Guide to Dinosaurs, illustrated by John D. Dawson. The “D” stands for “Dinosaur”, one imagines. It’s time for some more early nineties Sibbicksaurs from this tiny spotter’s guide. Deinonychus is at least partially based on the somewhat notoriously freaky creature from the Normanpedia. Dawson manages to tone down its creep factor a little bit. All the wrinkles that carried over from Bakker have…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Creatures

Vintage Dinosaur Art May 3, 2023

Whenever I’ve reviewed books from the United States in the past, it’s tended to be because a kind reader has either scanned their pages, or simply sent me the whole thing via international mail. (Thanks again, Herman!) This one, however, turned up rather unexpectedly on eBay, sold by an online second-hand bookshop in the UK. It’s part of the ‘Honey Bear Books’ series published by Modern Publishing (“a division of Unisystems, Inc.” of New York), which appears to have been…

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