James Gurney (born June 14, 1958) is an American artist and author known for his illustrated book series Dinotopia, which is presented in the form of a 19th-century explorer's
journal from an island utopia cohabited by humans and dinosaurs.
Gurney is also a paleoartist who depicts and restores in his paintings extinct fauna such as both avian and non-avian dinosaurs.
Life and education
James Gurney was born on June 14, 1958, in Glendale, California.[1] He grew up in Palo Alto, California, the youngest of five children of Joanna and Robert Gurney, a mechanical engineer.[2]
Growing up, he showed great interested in dinosaurs but found few books on the subject in his local library or school. The first dinosaur fossil he saw was that of an Allosaurus at a museum. His fascination with dinosaurs led to an interest in archaeology. As a youth, he dug up his home's back yard looking for arrowheads or lost temples.[1]
Gurney met his wife, fellow artist Jeanette, as a sketching partner[3] in Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California.[4] Together they moved to the Hudson Valley of New York, where they raised their two sons.[4] Gurney welcomed his family around when painting, setting up a play space in the studio near his painting table.[5] The couple are still avid outdoor painters,[6] living in a small town in the Hudson Valley.[4][7]
Career
Prompted by a cross-country adventure on freight trains, he and Thomas Kinkade coauthored The Artist's Guide to Sketching in 1982.
Gurney's freelance illustration career began in the 1980s, during which time he developed his characteristic realistic renderings of fantastic scenes, painted in oil using methods similar to the academic realists and Golden Age illustrators. He painted more than 70 covers for science fiction and fantasy paperback novels, and he created several stamp designs for the U.S. Postal Service, most notably The World of Dinosaurs in 1996.
The inspiration that came from researching these archaeological reconstructions led to a series of lost-world panoramas, including Waterfall City (1988) and Dinosaur Parade (1989).
Sequels of Dinotopia that are both written and illustrated by Gurney include Dinotopia: The World Beneath (1995), Dinotopia: First Flight (1999), and Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (2007).
Most recently, he has written two art-instruction books: Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (2009), a book about drawing and painting things that do not exist;[11] and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (2010).[12] These books are based upon Gurney's blog posts, in which he gives practical advice to realist and fantasy artists.
Debus, Allen A. (2006). Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction: A Thematic Survey (1st ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Company. ISBN978-0-7864-2672-0.
Hintz, Carrie; Elaine Ostry (2003). Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN0-415-94017-6.
Reed, Walt (2001). The Illustrator in America 1860–2000. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications. ISBN0-8230-2523-3.