Yes, the pose is a little awkward (I guess it’s rearing) and the skin does threaten to turn into Normanpedia-era Sibbick-style ‘wrinkly leathery hide’ in places. Yes, there are hadrosaurs in this book but, as usual, I’ve just got to do the theropods first. Sadly, the dust jacket was missing from the copy John gave me, but it probably looked something like this. In short: I like it, and John does too, don’t you know. It seems like Dixon knocked out three dinosaur books every day over breakfast during the ’80s and ’90s (until he eventually went mad and we ended up with If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today), but one never gets a similar impression from Kirk’s art.
Of course, they’re still beautifully painted and frequently possessed of more artistic flair than any illustrations from a Dougal Dixon-authored popular dinosaur book from ’89 has any right to be.
Generally, the creatures appearing here are less sleek and Paulian, and a little more obviously retro-looking, as one might well expect. Previously featured Kirk works have predominantly been from the 1990s, so imagine my delight when one John Conway thrust The Big Book of Dinosaurs into my hands – a Kirk-illustrated book from 1989! It’s fascinating to see just how much Kirk’s dinosaur art evolved in really quite a short space of time. Steve Kirk’s an underappreciated talent in the world of palaeoart, so I’m happy to say that we’ve featured his work a few times before, both here and over at our old home.
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