Your Charmosaurs crew is here again with a cool new episode. This month, we’re discussing the works of the late, great Brian Franczak as it appears in The National Audubon Pocket Guide: Dinosaurs. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Mark, Natee and Gemma discuss the merits of an unfairly forgotten palaeo master of the ninetes. Then, old familiar voices Steve White and Darren Naish come on the show to discuss their new palaeoart compendium, Mesozoic Art II. Who is the…
If, like me, you struggle to keep up with the glut of quality palaeoart emanating from all corners of the world these days, then Steve White and Darren Naish have another book for you. The sequel to 2022’s Mesozoic Art (and spiritual successor to the earlier Dinosaur Art books), Mesozoic Art II, is a fatter-than-ever compendium of the work of no fewer than 25 palaeoartists (as opposed to the paltry 20 found in MA1). Whereas the leaps between Dinosaur Art, Dinosaur Art II and Mesozoic…
Today’s title is mostly a prime example of late ’90s – early 2000s kiddie book filler, but no doubt thanks to the arcane rules of licensing it manages to feature some interesting artwork all the same. The Ultimate Book of Dinosaurs (not to be confused with the vastly superior DK book from ’93) was first published in 2000 by Parragon, with this edition arriving in 2002. No fewer than 12 artists illustrated this book, but individual pieces are sadly not credited.…
Who doesn’t want another coffee table book filled with very pretty palaeoart printed on good quality paper? Mesozoic Art is the spiritual successor to Dinosaur Art and Dinosaur Art II, both published by Titan Books in 2012 and 2017, respectively. As Bloomsbury has published this one, it can’t be a sequel in the literal sense, even if the front cover is very, very strongly suggestive of it being so. It also (in spite of the cover design) departs from its…
It’s time for the eleventh episode of the famous LITC podcast! Today, Marc, Niels and Natee discuss perhaps the single most influential book of dinosaur art in the entire world: Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, by one Gregory S. Paul ™. Marc interviews Friend Of The Blog Steve White about his upcoming compendium of Mesozoic Art, his new, gruesome alphabet book, and of course his legendary work for Dinosaurs! Magazine and the wilderness years that followed. In the news, Niels…
Having covered this book’s theropods in a previous post, I suppose it’s time we give those Other Dinosaurs a quick look. I still think it’s a real shame that this series wasn’t published more widely; the illustrations are consistently excellent and serve as a wonderful reminder of where we were at in the late ’90s. This was the work of some of the best palaeo-illustrators around, and it’s never made more clear than when they apply the same care, attention…
When speaking to Steve White not so long ago – in relation to his work on Dinosaurs! – he told me about a multi-volume dinosaur encyclopedia he’d also played a part in back in the ’90s. Steve contributed illustrations alongside LITC favourites Jim Robins and Steve Kirk among others, while the text was written by the likes of Paul Barrett, Tom Holtz and Mark Norell. Sadly, the encyclopedia – published by Marshall Cavendish in 1999 – was only ever sold…
Any dinosaur-loving child in the UK in the early 1990s simply had to have a Dinosaurs! magazine collection. I’ve looked at the series on a number of occasions previously, mostly because it’s a treasure trove of 1990s palaeoart (of widely varying quality), but also because it’s hugely nostalgic for me personally, easily as much as Jurassic Park. My parents placed a subscription with our (now long-defunct) local newsagent, so I had every copy delivered to my door. Mostly thanks to…
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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.