Dinosaur Art and Artists

Without drawings, paintings, and models of dinosaurs, we would never really get an idea of what they looked like. Fossil bones give us an idea of what parts are what (arms, legs, head, tail) and how big a certain animal was. Footprints tell us about their locomotion, how they walked, or ran. Skin impressions even tell us what they were covered with and, with recent discoveries, how the coloring might have been patterned. But, to put all these things together takes more than a scientist, it also takes an artist.

People have been depicting animals since man was first able to scrawl some charcoal on a cave wall. Of course, then, the animals were walking around in front of early man and was able to "work from life", so to speak. Today, to show what an animal looks like that has been extinct for millions of years takes a little imagination. An artist must study the past as well as the present.

To create something from a starting point of bones and impressions can be difficult. Two artists viewing the same material can come up with completely different ideas of what the same animal would look like. There aren't any rules to reconstructing a dinosaur and sometimes an artist's imagination can run wild and come up with some very strange interpretations.

A good place for the artist to start is using comparative anatomy. This is where a particular part of an organism's anatomy is compared to a similar part in a different organism. This process is easy in the case of comparing the anatomy of a living tiger to that of an extinct Smilodon (saber-toothed cat). Since they are already very similar, you can reconstruct a Smilodon with a great degree of accuracy by looking at modern tigers. Although, in actuality, tigers and Smilodons are from different evolutionary families, they are close enough in anatomical structure to use one to recreate the other in basic appearance.

Dinosaurs closest living relatives are crocodiles and birds. So, an artist might look at how a bird's leg, foot, and claws are structurally and also look at how the skin is and perhaps use that to recreate the foot of a theropod such as Tyrannosaurus rex. Obviously, much more muscle and size would have to be added, but the basic underlying structure is there to start with.

Another aspect to consider is what kind of lifestyle did a particular animal have. Were they a carnivore or a herbivore? Establishing that to start with will send the artist in a particular direction and help in making certain choices. What would a predator need in order to catch it's food? What would a herbivore need in order to not BE food?

The environment of a particular animal will also help in establishing traits such as color. Predators will need to blend in to their environment as to be effective hunters. Color is also used to attract mates. Other aspects such as horns, feathers, or anything that might single out a specific animal can also be considered. Males might be more ornate to attract females. This is very common among birds.

Once all the scientific data is applied the artist can then use their imagination to add their own personal take on what the animal looked like. Flipping through the pages of several different dinosaur books will show vastly different renditions of the same animal. Type in a dinosaur name in you favorite search engine and you will see dozens of different variations of the same animal. This is where the view can form their own opinion as to which one they think best represents that animal in their mind.

Artists