T-REX'S TERRIBLE TOOTH

The original title to this book was 'T-Rex Teatime'. It was later changed to 'T-Rex's Terrible Tooth'. Personally I don't find it quite rolls off the tongue as easily as the first, but hey.

I was always looking forward to the day I'd be offered a dinosaur book to illustrate. As a child I was a dino-nut. I could name so many different kinds of dinosaurs, my walls were covered in dinosaur posters, I had books and books on them, I owned dinosaur toys. I often dreamed about them, even hallucinated them a few times. Living in Brisbane my whole life, I used to thrill at driving past the old museum at Bowen Hills and seeing the huge T-Rex and Triceratops sculptures out in the open (they have since been moved to cold concrete boxes that is the 'new' museum). My obsession wasn't limited to dinosaurs though, I liked any giant hulking monsters — Godzilla, Kong, dragons, giant insects, Harryhausen's many monstrous creations, etc. But dinosaurs were extra special, because they actually existed at one point. Naturally I drew dinosaurs frequently growing up. I've never entirely grown out of them, I still have a soft spot for giant monsters. I've wanted to write my own dino book, but have never thought up a worthy story, yet... So when I was offered this one by Koala Books, written by Kathryn England, I said yes immediately. Though at first when reading the text I worried the story was just a bit of vegetarian spin, but it was the ending that really sold it for me — the timeless message about a leopard not changing it's spots. This ending was devious, which I liked, and I'm impressed they went with this option...

The main character underwent a few revisions...

Until we settled on this design:

I loosely based this design on my dog "Foo", who also has a bulky head and an underbite. He also has an insatiable appetite!

Once the roughs were finished, I moved onto the finished art. Here's where I hit a slight snag. This being there next book I did after The Pumpkin Eater From Pondicherry, and having enjoyed the process of making that book, I intended employing the same approach to those illustrations to these ones...

I submitted the following coloured samples to the publisher:

It turned out the publisher were wanting illustrations reminiscent of those in 'Who Flung Dung?' and 'Cheeky Charlie', which they had published the Australian editions for, and felt I was doing a different style to those. With a degree of reluctance, I replenished my dried up acrylic inks and pulled my previous method out of semi-retirement...

My basic palette for these was to make the carnivores warmer and 'meaty' in colour, and the herbivores cooler and 'fruity', and their dwellings would be similar. So for the central T-Rex character I mixed a colour like that of dried blood:

I made his home in a volcanic landscape, with lots of muted greyish 'sooty' colours...

Whilst the herbivores homes are lush and green, with a lot more bright colour...

And somewhere in between is a vast desert separating the two regions. The herbivores here are a mix of warmish and coolish colours...

I went crazy with rock textures in this book, again using sea sponge. I'm fascinated by rocks in real life, especially granite, as I spent many winter holidays as a child in the granite belt region. Anyone who is familiar with Girraween National Park might notice the granite arch I slipped into the background here...

I can still remember one of my very first exposures to dinosaurs, the one thing that may have sparked my interest as a child. It was this painting, 'The Age Of Reptiles':

This is a giant mural by Rudolph F. Zallinger at the Peabody Museum at Yale, and I first saw it in an old wildlife book of my father's — it stretched for three pages. I used to study this picture for ages, I was completely absorbed into this world. I speculated on where each dinosaur was coming from and where they were going, who would eat who and working out escape routes for herbivores, and relishing the gore that lay underneath the Allosaur! It never occurred to me that this painting represented the different periods in prehistory expanding millions of years, I just took it literally and saw it all happening at once, in the one location. This shaped my childhood image of dinosaurs — I thought groups of dinosaurs of all variety used to spend their time congregating on the same field, grazing and fighting, and doing all sorts of crazy stuff!

There is no hardback version of this book to my knowledge, only paperback. If there was going to be a hardback version, I supplied these endpapers in case:

I don't like wastage, so I know I'll find a use for these somewhere down the track, if I happen to do another dinosaur-related book. I hope so...

T-REX'S TERRIBLE TOOTH was released this year in Australia, and available at all good book stores.