Artist Draws Modern Animals The Way We Draw Dinosaurs And The Results Are Extremely Interesting

Artist and author C.M. Koseman thinks we've done a disservice to dinos.

Elana

• Published in Interesting
• January 7, 2020

No matter how you look at it, when it comes to attempting to show today's people what we think dinosaurs may have looked like, we don't have much to work with. There's certainly a lot of science to our assumptions but the truth is, there is just as much artistic freedom involved in the re-creations because absolutely no one ever has seen a dinosaur in the flesh.

Now, that wasn't really something I'd personally thought much about until recently when I stumbled on the artwork of artist and author C.M. Koseman. Koseman contributed to the book All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals where him and John Conway realized something about our depiction of dinosaurs was... off.

In an interview with Atlas Obsura, Koseman said:

We were both dinosaur geeks, but the more we looked at these skeletons, and the more we looked at the pictures, we noticed that most mainstream dinosaur art didn’t look at dinosaurs as real creatures.

Looking at early depictions of human interpretations of what we think dinosaurs may have looked like and it's easy to say, we've come a long way.

Doesn't this early paleo artwork look ridiculous? Yes, yes it does.

Upon pondering how ridiculous we've drawn dinosaurs, Koseman decided to flip the switch and draw modern animals the way we draw dinosaurs. The results? Amazing, honestly.

The Swan

Koseman thinks that artists tend to either under-feather or over-feather dinosaurs in their art. He also thinks artists tend to "shrink wrap" skin onto dinosaurs, neglecting fat and flaps of skin that logically would have existed.

The Hippo

Dinosaur heads?

“The reference has always been crocodiles,” says Kosemen. “The biggest thing is teeth and facial fat. Readers have to be aware that all dinosaurs they see in all media, and especially in popular culture, seem to have their heads flensed. They’ve always got these weird grins with only the teeth visible.”

The Baboon

“Imagine if you found a raccoon, and only half of the tail was covered in hair, so then you carry that over to a living reconstruction.”

Elephant, Zebra, and Rhino

And what's up with the proportions artists are putting on dinosaurs? Everything is so exaggerated. Koseman says:

Artists sometimes do this semi-unconsciously because they want to depict the head and the claws, the business end of the thing.

In other words, they want to make dinosaurs look cool.

Well, alright, I'll give him that one. They have definitely made dinosaurs look cool.

You can get Koseman's book, featuring 60 illustrations here on Amazon. Don't forget to share with your dino-loving friends!

Elana