Browsing Tag

Protoceratops

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…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur Stamps of the World – Part 1

Vintage Dinosaur Art February 8, 2023

Given that the sorts of people who are enthusiastic about dinosaurs and prehistory also tend to possess carefully curated collections of curious objects, it’s only natural that there’s a strong overlap with philately, that is to say, stamp collecting. (After all, isn’t all science other than physics merely stamp collecting?) I’ve never much been into it myself – I have just a couple of dinosaur-related sets, purely because of the dinosaurs – but it’s easy to see the appeal. Happily,…

Naturhistorisches Museum Wien – Part 2

Museums September 25, 2022

Last time, we explored the upper floor of the baroque 19th century palace that holds the Natural History Museum of Vienna. It’s time to descend the marble staircase into the past and take our journey through deep time, from the distant precambrian days to the Holocene. Maybe we’ll even meet some dinosaurs along the way, who knows? I hadn’t done any research beforehand, so I visited the museum with very limited knowledge and not much in the way of expectations.…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: On the Trail of the Dinosaurs – Part 2

Vintage Dinosaur Art August 21, 2022

We’re back on the trail of the dinosaurs with Mike Benton and Graham Rosewarne, two giants of the extremely niche genre of Popular British Dino Rennaissance Books (always well-represented on these pages). Last time, we looked mostly at Rosewarne’s panoramic compositions and found ourselves maybe a bit less than extremely impressed. But Rosewarne is at his best when drawing dinosaur profiles, and fortunately, this book allows him to do plenty of that. One of Rosewarne’s most famous and well-remembered creations…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The World of Dinosaurs – Part 2

Vintage Dinosaur Art August 18, 2022

My first post on this book was almost entirely dedicated to theropods (the best dinosaurs) – so we’d best now turn our attention to Everything Else. As discussed last time, the artwork here (credited to Wilcock Riley Graphic Art) is mostly fairly typical, and often even quite good, for the time in which was produced (i.e. 1977). But the artists do manage to make the odd strange turn here and there… Behold: Styracosaurus, but it’s a rhino now. As in,…

Older Posts →