Zdeněk Burian

July 23, 2013 4:32 PM

727 illustrations by legendary paleoartist Zdeněk Burian.
posted by brundlefly (15 comments total)

Wooly Rhino looks sad.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:36 PM on July 23, 2013

I am confused. These are not drawings of a popular Boeing airliner, as I expected.
posted by notme at 4:41 PM on July 23, 2013 [4 favorites]

That tiny puffle doggie is surrounded by the bones of its prey.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:59 PM on July 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

Greg Nog: "I love how all these pictures are big terrifying creatures, all red in tooth and claw, and then there's TINY PUFFLE DOGGIE"

It may be cute but those could be human bones down by its feet! And it appears to be licking its own face just like my cats do after feasting on the flesh of some innocent creature.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 4:59 PM on July 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
posted by one_bean at 5:43 PM on July 23, 2013

the format looks just like these little sticker books that my brother and I played with, circa 1970.....they may have even had his art, I know we had a dinosaur one

now I want to lick glue
posted by thelonius at 6:45 PM on July 23, 2013 [3 favorites]

Thank you!! I vividly remember these: growing up in the 60's, they were the illustrations in the library books I took out and poured over obsessively for weeks at a time. Some of them -- Iguanadon, Diplodocus, the weird massive scorpion/lobster things -- still form my primary images of dinosaurs and prehistoric fauna.

Some of these are illustrations for this really cool 'historiography of paleontology': Paper Dinosuars: 1824-1969.
posted by jrochest at 6:57 PM on July 23, 2013 [3 favorites]

Odd. Scanned the photos and didn't see one saddle. Flagged as fraudulent.
posted by Give my rear guards to fraudway at 7:45 PM on July 23, 2013

I'm on the paleo diet and have been using these pictures as a cookbook. I'm having trouble finding Mastadon.
posted by eye of newt at 8:45 PM on July 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

This post made my day. Thank you!
posted by marxchivist at 9:35 PM on July 23, 2013

Brontosaurus!
posted by KokuRyu at 10:15 PM on July 23, 2013

Here's a trailer for Cesta do Pravěku (aka Journey to the Beginning of Time), which was apparently heavily influenced by Burian's work.
posted by brundlefly at 11:43 PM on July 23, 2013

I particularly like his landscape illustrations. I have always been fascinated with how landscape has changed over time and long for the chance to go back in time and see what a mesozoic or devonian or precambrian world might have been like.
posted by jamincan at 6:44 AM on July 24, 2013

I thought a paleoartist was a hominid (hominoid?) who sketched things in caves by torchlight, or who made figurines like the Venus of Willendorf.
posted by etherist at 7:49 AM on July 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

etherist: I thought a paleoartist was a hominid (hominoid?) who sketched things in caves by torchlight, or who made figurines like the Venus of Willendorf.

I especially feel the "Artist's Statement" at Lascaux really drove home the premodernist messages imbued in the red ochre hand prints.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:59 AM on July 25, 2013