Squalid posted:

since someone mentioned paleoart and how a lot of artists depicted dinosaurs with bare exposed teeth like crocodiles, I'm going to post one of the best paleoartists, Charles R Knight. Knight produced his most famous work in the late 19th and early 20th century. Although his recreations were limited by the mainstream interpretations of dinosaur biology at the time, they were relatively pioneering in their depictions of dinosaurs as active and dynamic animals.







Besides enjoying their artistic value I think it is interesting to compare his recreations with those of later artists. It's interesting how based on our current mainstream understanding, he probably gets things right that many later recreations got wrong. For example his inclusion of gums on the above depiction of Tyrannosaurus rex, which many later artists would remove, and his attention to get the fatty and muscular tissue right to avoid the emaciated look of eighties paleoart.

While of course the depicted behavior of the two Dryptosauri in the last image I posted is speculative, I love the cat like movements he gives them. So many illustrations just have the animals staring blankly off into the distance like a bored cow, but Knight was excellent at actually giving his subjects a spark of life.