Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs - Part 2

In the first part of our examination of The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs, we came upon chubby, oily-looking tyrannosaurs, alarmingly carnivorous-looking stegosaurs, and Godzilla. However - and as the title implies - this book goes beyond the eponymous archosaur clade, taking a look at various other Mesozoic monstrosities. Bring on the zombie-pterosaurs!

Now let's be fair - depicting pterosaurs in dessicated, mummy-like fashion was commonplace at the time this book was produced. Contemporary mass estimates had giants like Pteranodon weigh about the same as the shrivelled walnut that sits between Ken Ham's ears. In order to make sense of this, life restorations had to be stripped of all but the most essential bodily tissues, and occasionally even of those. Phillipps' Pterodactylus (above) is not an aberration, but the norm - right down to the erroneous dangling bat-posture. As it happens, I believe this is a rather effective plate - it's striking, nicely composed, and shows the animal's key attributes and overall form rather nicely, without being all dull and diagrammatical about it. So there.

...Having said all that, some of these illustrations are still pretty gruesome. Phillips' Rhamphorhynchus (above) is arguably not as extreme as William Stout's Quetzalcoatlus, but still resembles a nightmarish phantasm, a pitch-black, skeletal wraith ready to descend from the skies with an unearthly screech and peck Daniel Radcliffe's eye out. Rhamphorhynchus (is that really how you spell it?) was rather scary-looking anyway, what with its jagged array of grotesque, jutting teeth. Nevertheless, in the world of palaeoart at least, it has tended to come a distant second in the freakiness stakes to a certain big-bonced basal pterosaur found by Mary Anning...

...Except in this case, where Dimorphodon actually has rather a sad air about it. It's those cow-like chops, but more than that, it's that gaze - a wet-eyed look of wearisome resignation. Life just ain't fair if you're a sunken-headed pterosaur in an out-of-print children's book. Although clearly upset about its general appearance, the bat-like black colour scheme actually looks rather slick; as Christian Bale would tell you in between screaming at film crew, everything looks better in black. (Of course, my own tendency towards sombre attire might, er, colour my views, somewhat.) The fur is noteworthy - in spite of their rather emaciated appearance in the illustrations, pterosaurs are not described as panda-like evolutionary failures in this book. Rather, they are declared to be likely warm-blooded, active, and relatively intelligent.

But brains or no, pterosaurs do have an alarming tendency to end up as somebody's lunch in TMWoD. This particularly applies to Pteranodon, which not only seems to fly directly into a tyrannosaur's mouth on the cover, but is later caught unawares by a very Knightian mosasaur. Phillipps' skill with a brush comes to the fore here, as the swirling, tumultuous seascapes are quite beautifully painted. Given the artists' obvious talents in this area (and, er, rather similar works by Burian and Knight), the following piece seems, quite happily, inevitable...

LET THEM FIGHT! It's the classical scene of crest-backed mosasaur versus impossibly snake-necked, rearing elasmosaur; a retrospectively silly palaeoart trope that nevertheless produced some brilliantly exciting artwork. Like this. Phillipps can't top Burian's more realistic and well-informed approach, but this is still a wonderfully lively and engaging piece - from the furious vortex of the waves, to the creatures' bloody wounds reflecting the crimson sky. This painting, we now know, is fantastical...but you've got to love it anyway.

The illustration that's aged perhaps the most gracefully also features a marine reptile, namely Nothosaurus. No doubt it's not entirely correct (those eyes don't look to be in quite the right place, for one), but the body plan is there, as are the snaggly teeth, correctly showing variation in form. Most importantly*, it's very beautifully painted, with a naturalistic approach that seems to be missing from many of the dinosaurs in this book - maybe because they were thought of more as 'monsters'. I particularly like the eye. Reminds me of pigeons.

Similarly well-painted is this Ornithosuchus. The book follows the once-popular idea that this animal was ancestral to theropods, and the illustration makes the animal appear more theropod-like than it likely was (even if certain Triassic pseudosuchians really did end up looking quite theropodesque). In spite of any inaccuracies, this plate is highly evocative in placing the animal in a very naturalistic-looking environment. It just goes to show that, even when they don't really know the animals they're portraying, decent artists can still pull through in the end. (Whereas Pixelshack never will. Give it up, DK.)

And finally...over on our Facebook page, Fabian Wiggers asked if this post would feature "that duckbill leaning against a tree in an awkward way and trying to chew a droopy branch". Well, here it is. After being all effusive about those other pieces (or at least, I probably was from the point of view of marine reptile bods), I'll have to shrug my shoulders and admit that this one's pretty bad. It's retro in the worst, 'let's copy other artists and insert generic backgrounds and vague trees!' kind of way. It's brown and dull and wrinkly and blah.

Of course, it could be worse.

*What can I say? When I drink, I betray myself.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs

Contrary to the beliefs of some - who seem to think that I collect these books by holding a net out of the window and reciting an arcane incantation until obsolete illustrations start falling from the clouds - I do actually physically own the vast majority of the books I review in Vintage Dinosaur Art. As time goes on, finding fresh old books and not paying through the nose becomes increasingly difficult. Praise be, then, to the Amnesty International book shop in Brighton, which is where I happened to find this gem of a book on sale for a single quid. Stumbling across something like this, and being able to walk out of the shop with it in my clutches, is a real joy. And believe me, this book is a corker.

The unmitigated, gleeful pulpiness begins on the cover, where a tyrannosaur with a rather salamandery face is depicted effortlessly snagging a (rather small) Pteranodon from the sky. Or Pteranodon is shown to be a hopelessly careless flyer, depending on your point of view. It's the kind of dino-kitsch that I can't miss from a mile away. Can the rest of The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs (1980) be this wonderful? Of course it can.

The majority of the illustrations in this book are by W Francis Phillipps, who proudly signs each of his works...while notably failing to add 'after [insert name]' on each occasion when he is clearly, uh, borrowing from another artist. Typically it's Burian, although the above illustration, depicting Allosaurus attacking one of those cheapy hollow sauropods you decapitated as a kid (just me?), seems to be based far more on a classic work by Knight. (EDIT: Terry N Thielen, on Facebook, reminded me of a Rod Ruth painting that this is a dead ringer for. Of course, it's not like I reviewed Ruth's work before...oh, wait.) The painterly (take a shot!) style is certainly attractive, and Phillipps is excellent at evoking a forbidding, ominous mood in his pieces; the muted, swampy browns and greens are both sombre and primordial, not to mention very reminiscent of Burian. It's a shame, then, that he doesn't really know his dinosaurs much. At all. Case in point: the next time Allosaurus appears in this book, it is depicted sneaking up behind a happily browsing Stegosaurus. But wait...isn't that...? Hang on a minute!

Up from the depths! Thirty stories high! Go go iffy perspective!

Fortunately, Allosaurus looks a little more like a normal (non-mutant, non-rubbery) theropod in the next scene. Unfortunately, that theropod is a tyrannosaur.

There's an awful lot to love about this image, and I might just have to have it printed on a t-shirt. I mean, Stegosaurus is often depicted flailing its spiny bits around in the faces of assailing theropods - after all, what else is supposed to do? Sprout pointy teeth and attack with the other end, too? But of course! In this scene, it's hard to tell who's attacking whom - which has a lot to do with the look of relish on the face of the stegosaur, angry eyebrows and all. It's all Allosaurus' fault for taking that oddly spreadeagled approach, which looks like it would be about as effective for attacking opponents as a member of the Brazilian football team.

Rather more successful in the predatory stakes is (not so) Sexy Rexy himself, here depicted in a guise about as aesthetically pleasing as a Range Rover Evoque. Classic old school palaeoart tropes on show here are the generic head that pays little heed to the skull, including uniform teeth; the lumpen, wrinkly body; and the upright posture. It's also - yet again - depicted tackling Styracosaurus, an animal from millions of years prior. Still, the massiveness of the thighs is at least a step up from the weed-o-muscles depicted in earlier artworks, and that lighting is fantastic. Just look at the gorgeous sunset reflecting on Rexy's chops! You can almost feel it. Lovely.

As an aside, there are very few depictions of bones in this book. (Hey, bones are boring, right? Who needs 'em?) One exception is this painting of a T. rex skull that has gone, er, a little awry. Clearly, the artist had reference material available to them, as the basic shape is there - but they might have been better off just pulling off a tracing job. That mandible...yeesh.

But back to the life restorations. Rexy might be a little tubby, but he has nothing on Gorged-o-saurus (below), who resembles the lovechild of Godzilla and that weird turd monster he battled once. The overall shininess of this creature's latex-like hide and its rotund shape are both reminiscent of some of Burian's work, although Burian tended to avoid the mistake of giving his theropods 'wide gauge' hips. I should point out again, however, that that background really is quite something; imagine a Wayne Barlowe dinosaur in there, and you'd have an instant classic.

Gorgo's gormlessness is matched by Iguanodon, here depicted in classic upright guise, and with erroneous extra teeth. The overall look of the creature is, again, highly reminiscent of Burian, while the obligatory dewlap is a trope that probably originated in Neave Parker's work. Nice sky, mind.

Perhaps the most blatant Burian rip-offs of all occur in the book's sauropod section. Not only is there a snorkelling brachiosaur that's a straight-up (mirrored) copy, the below 'brontosaur' is also derivative of a Burian painting, with a few modifications. Still, I love the head. Is this proof that artists working on copycat palaeoart in the late '70s and early '80s had the foresight and anatomical intuition to realise that sauropods' fleshy nostrils likely resided near the ends of their snouts, in spite of the bony nasal openings being above the eyes? No.

And finally...Archaeopteryx. Because you've got to have Archaeopteryx. It's a fairly typical effort that includes the usual slight misunderstanding of how primary feathers attach to the hand. Aside from that, and the oft-utilised blue/green colouration, and the strangely curving mouth (moreso on the one I had to crop out), it's not too bad. I haven't mentioned the text of this book yet; perhaps I should have done, for not only is it dramatic and slightly florid in the tradition of vintage kiddies' dinosaur books, it also features such wonderful lines as this:

"It [Archaeopteryx] was about the size of a pigeon and although feathered, had reptilian scales on its legs..."

I suppose if you don't count feet as part of the legs...there's still not a great deal of evidence that Archaeopteryx had scaly legs. Not to mention the fact that the legs are feathered in the illustration. Birds: someday, nobody will have a problem with the idea that they're reptiles.

And that's all for now. But I haven't finished with this book yet; far from it. Next week, zombie pterosaurs, and Knightian plesiosaurs rise again!