June 30 , 2016

by Mark Witton

Finally, my long promised palaeoart book Recreating an Age of Reptiles is available from online retailers! Conceived as a short, 'how long can it take to publish a print-on-demand book where I have full control?' sort of project, today marks the end of the year of design, illustration and writing work it actually took to take this broad, palaeoart-led look at various parts of the Mesozoic. The result is a Letter page-sized (that's 21.59 x 27.94 cm) full-colour paperback with 108 pages of text and imagery, and over 90 bits of artwork. About 20% of the artwork has not been published anywhere before, at least not in entirety, and virtually none of the pictures have been featured in other publications. So if you're after some new entries on your palaeoart bookshelf, or hard copies of images of mine that you've seen around the internet, this might be the book for you. You can access a preview of the book interior via its page at Lulu.com.

The book is divided into a number of thematic sections based around animal clades, specifics of behaviour, or types of habitat. In selecting the art and generating new pieces for this project I tried to keep things varied and interesting. This is not a book dominated by any one particular type of animal, nor a tome where every picture shows prehistoric animals ripping each other's throats out (if, indeed, that can be said to feature at all). Dinosaur groups account for 50% of the book's content, with the rest taken up by mammal-like creatures, Crocodyliformes, Triassic archosauromorphs, pterosaurs and others. Many of the pictures show atypical behaviours such as burrowing, swimming, sleeping, falling over, shyness and nocturnality, and weather - rather than just variably coloured skies - plays an active role in a good number of illustrations. I'm not going to boast that "you've never seen the likes of this before!" but, presented as a collective, I hope it presents a nuanced take on Mesozoic palaeoartworks.

accompanied with details about the research, artistic decisions and researcher collaborations that informed their production. The book is bracketed by essays musing on aspects of the palaeoartistic process: how many ways we can reconstruct extinct animals without leaving the realm of scientific credibility; the role of artistic personality and biases in palaeoart; whether we constrain our art by adhering too tightly to familiar parts of science, and whether we should view the inevitable outdating of our work as positive or negative. While (hopefully) avoiding naval gazing, I've tried to outline some of my own inspirations and philosophy concerning palaeoart production throughout this text. We don't really discuss our individuality as palaeoartists very much - why we prefer certain colours or animal behaviour, why we choose certain compositions - but it's something I'm curious to hear more about from the palaeoart community, so I've shared some of my views in this book. It seems that discussing palaeoart as 'art' rather than a strictly illustrative or scientific endeavour seems like an important step to improving its standing and perceived value among its patrons.

So, where can you buy it from, and how much is it?
The cover price for Recreating an Age of Reptiles is £26, and it's available now, direct from Lulu.com (below). You will be able to buy it at all major online book stores (Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.) as soon as they finish cataloguing it - this is in process as we speak, and I'll update this post once it's sorted. As I understand it, it might be a few weeks before these outlets put it on sale.

But before you think 'I'll wait for Amazon', note that Lulu.com is, and will always be, the cheapest place to buy Recreating an Age of Reptiles. I've set a 5% discount at their store which means it's retailing for £24.70, not £26. I'll be honest about why I've set this incentive: major retailers take 50% of sale profits before the rest can be divided up among printers, publishers and authors, which means book authors are not left with much from their sales. Lulu offers the same shop service as anywhere else online (and you can pay with Paypal, too) and their service, in my experience, is swift and efficient - you should have the book within a week from ordering.

There are other ways you can get a copy. One way is to support me on Patreon, a copy of the book being a reward for the highest support tier. This copy will be signed and doodled on if requested. If you have any requests for a small sketch in the front pages, please let me know when you place your order!

The final way is to buy a signed and doodled copy through my website store. These are a bit more expensive than the unsigned copy, because there's two sets of shipping to factor (once to me, and then again to you) but hopefully not too steep at £30. These will be on sale any day now. As above, if you have any requests for a small sketch along with my signature please let me know when you place your order!

I'll have more info and promotional material for the book here in a few days - in the meantime, if you have any comments or questions, be sure to ask them in the comment field below, on Facebook or Twitter (#RecARep is the Recreating an Age of Reptiles hashtag). And for those who buy the book, I hope you enjoy it!

http://markwitton-com.blogspot.ru/2016/06/new-palaeoart-book-recreating-age-of.html