T. K. Arispe

 In the latter half of the 20th century and first few decades of the 21st, for whatever ill-advised reason, there was a trend in a lot of paleoart to reconstruct dinosaurs and pterosaurs with weirdly scant amounts of soft tissue, leading to under-muscled bodies and even being able to see the fenestrae in skulls and other skeletal details that probably were not visible on a healthy living animal.

It's really important to remember that dinosaurs and pterosaurs had muscles and connective tissue and fat and organs just like every other animal. Just because a certain generation grew up seeing dinosaurs a certain way, doesn't mean it's not terribly, terribly wrong. So I drew this very unfortunate Lambeosaurus to remind us all to give our dinosaurs plenty of soft tissue.

I've been reading retro dinosaur books for fun, but I usually just find myself commenting on the artwork out loud to nobody (or my cat if he's around). I'm trying to be patient with the whole "the 20th century didn't know as much about dinosaurs as we do now" thing, but for Pete's sake, treat these creatures like real functioning organisms, not warty toothy movie monsters. 

I still can't get over this truly cursed Deinonychus from one book where not only were the hands all sorts of wrong (and reminded me way too much of aye-aye hands), but the eye was in the wrong fenestra. I was really shocked to see this from an artist who was pretty well-known for his dino art back in the day. If you make an occupation out of drawing dinosaurs, you ought to be familiar enough with them to know which fenestra in theropods is the orbital fenestra. And even if you didn't know that (but you honestly really should know that), spending just a few minutes with some research papers will set the record straight. There's absolutely no excuse for that kind of thing.

(And no, you don't get the excuse that in the 80's, in the pre-Internet days, it was harder to access scientific journals. If you're a professional paleoartist, you owe it to yourself and the world to make sure you're well-stocked with reference material. And, if you're in the 80's, you could totally just call John Ostrom, the man who discovered Deinonychus, and ask him about it because he's still alive.)

Put in the work, people. Taking the time to do your research may take you a few hours or a few days or maybe a week tops. But cringey paleoart will forever stand as a testament to your lack of effort.

... Okay, back to more rage-reading! I have such strange hobbies.