James Gurney

Last updated

James Gurney
Born (1958-06-14) June 14, 1958 (age 65)
NationalityAmerican
Education Art Center College of Design
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley (BA)
Known forIllustration, paleoart

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.

Contents

Gurney is also a paleoartist who depicts and restores in his paintings extinct fauna such as both avian and non-avian dinosaurs.

Early 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]

He studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a bachelor of arts degree with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1979. [1] He then studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, for a couple of semesters. [1]

Career

Prompted by a cross-country adventure on freight trains, he and Thomas Kinkade coauthored The Artist's Guide to Sketching in 1982.

Gurney and Kinkade also worked as painters of background scenes [3] for the animated film Fire and Ice (1983), co-produced by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta. [4]

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.

Starting in 1983, he began work on over a dozen assignments for National Geographic magazine, including reconstructions of the ancient Moche, Kushite, and Etruscan civilizations, and the Jason and Ulysses voyages for Tim Severin.

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).

With the encouragement of retired publishers Ian and Betty Ballantine, he discontinued his freelance work and committed two years' time to writing and illustrating Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time , published in 1992. The book made The New York Times Bestseller List, and won Hugo, World Fantasy, Chesley, Spectrum, and Colorado Children's Book awards. It sold over a million copies and was translated into 18 languages. [5]

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).

Original artwork by Gurney from the Dinotopia books has been exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Royal Tyrrell Museum and is currently[ when? ] on tour to museums throughout the United States and Europe.

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; [6] and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (2010). [7] These books are based upon Gurney's blog posts, in which he gives practical advice to realist and fantasy artists.

On February 21, 2012, Gurney was inducted as a Living Master by the Art Renewal Center. [8] [9]

The dinosaur Torvosaurus gurneyi was named in honor of Gurney in 2014. [10]

Related Research Articles

<i>Dinotopia</i> Fantasy book series

Dinotopia is a series of illustrated fantasy books, created by author and illustrator James Gurney. It is set in the titular Dinotopia, an isolated island inhabited by shipwrecked humans and sapient dinosaurs who have learned to coexist peacefully as a single symbiotic society. The first book was published in 1992 and has "appeared in 18 languages in more than 30 countries and sold two million copies." Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath both won Hugo awards for best original artwork.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Photorealism</span> Genre of art

Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be used broadly to describe artworks in many different media, it is also used to refer specifically to a group of paintings and painters of the American art movement that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Whelan</span> American fantasy and science fiction artist

Michael Whelan is an American artist of imaginative realism. For more than 30 years, he worked as an illustrator, specializing in science fiction and fantasy cover art. Since the mid-1990s, he has pursued a fine art career, selling non-commissioned paintings through galleries in the United States and through his website.

James C. Christensen was an American illustrator and painter of religious and fantasy art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Kinkade</span> American painter of popular realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects

William Thomas Kinkade III was an American painter of popular realistic, pastoral, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for achieving success during his lifetime with the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products by means of the Thomas Kinkade Company. According to Kinkade's company, one in every twenty American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings.

<i>Torvosaurus</i> Megalosaurid theropod dinosaur genus from Late Jurassic Period

Torvosaurus is a genus of large megalosaurine theropod dinosaur that lived approximately 165 to 148 million years ago during the Callovian to Tithonian ages of the late Middle and Late Jurassic period in what is now Colorado, Portugal, Germany, and possibly England, Spain, Tanzania, and Uruguay. It contains two currently recognized species, Torvosaurus tanneri and Torvosaurus gurneyi, plus a third unnamed species from Germany.

Donato Giancola is an American artist specializing in narrative realism with science fiction and fantasy content, including images for Tolkien's Middle-earth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Bell</span> American artist (born 1958)

Julie Bell is an American fine artist, illustrator, photographer, bodybuilder and wildlife painter. Bell is also a fantasy artist and a representative of the heroic fantasy and fantastic realism genres. Bell has won Chesley Awards and was the designer of the Dragons of Destiny series. She also won first place awards in the Art Renewal Center International Salon, which bestowed on her the title "ARC Living Master".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fantastic art</span> Type of art that explores fantasy and imagination

Fantastic art is a broad and loosely defined art genre. It is not restricted to a specific school of artists, geographical location or historical period. It can be characterised by subject matter – which portrays non-realistic, mystical, mythical or folkloric subjects or events – and style, which is representational and naturalistic, rather than abstract – or in the case of magazine illustrations and similar, in the style of graphic novel art such as manga.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R. H. Ives Gammell</span> American painter

Robert Hale Ives Gammell was an American artist best known for his sequence of paintings based on Francis Thompson's poem "The Hound of Heaven". Gammell painted symbolic images that reflected his study of literature, mythology, psychology, and religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles R. Knight</span> American painter (1874–1953)

Charles Robert Knight was an American wildlife and paleoartist best known for his detailed paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. His works have been reproduced in many books and are currently on display at several major museums in the United States. One of his most famous works is a mural of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, which helped establish the two dinosaurs as "mortal enemies" in popular culture. Working at a time when many fossil discoveries were fragmentary and dinosaur anatomy was not well understood, many of his illustrations have later been shown to be incorrect representations. Nevertheless, he has been hailed as "one of the great popularizers of the prehistoric past".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atelier</span> Workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts

An atelier is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or visual art released under the master's name or supervision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Joshua Chaplin</span> French painter

Charles Joshua Chaplin was a French painter and printmaker who painted both landscapes and portraits. He worked in techniques such as pastels, lithography, watercolor, chalk, oil painting and etching. He was best known for his elegant portraits of young women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Classical Realism</span> 20-21st century artistic movement that values skill and beauty

Classical Realism is an artistic movement in the late-20th and early 21st century in which drawing and painting place a high value upon skill and beauty, combining elements of 19th-century neoclassicism and realism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Collins</span> American painter (born 1964)

Jacob Collins is an American realist painter working in New York City. He is a leading figure of the contemporary classical art revival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paleoart</span> Art genre attempting to depict prehistoric life according to scientific evidence

Paleoart is any original artistic work that attempts to depict prehistoric life according to scientific evidence. Works of paleoart may be representations of fossil remains or imagined depictions of the living creatures and their ecosystems. While paleoart is typically defined as being scientifically informed, it is often the basis of depictions of prehistoric animals in popular culture, which in turn influences public perception of and fuels interest in these animals. The word paleoart is also used in an informal sense, as a name for prehistoric art, most often cave paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nelson Shanks</span> American painter

John Nelson Shanks was an American artist and painter. His best known works include his portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, first shown at Hirschl & Adler Gallery in New York City, April 24 to June 28, 1996 and the portrait of president Bill Clinton for the National Portrait Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paint mixing</span>

Paint mixing is the practice of mixing components or colors of paint to combine them into a working material and achieve a desired hue. The components that go into paint mixing depend on the function of the product sought to be produced. For example, a painter of portraits or scenery on a canvas may be seeking delicate hues and subtle gradiations, while the painter of a house may be more concerned with durability and consistency of colors in paints presented to customers, and the painter of a bridge or a ship may have the weatherability of the paint as their primary concern.

Bruno Civitico was an Italian-born American painter, draughtsman and teacher. He is widely considered to be "a major player in the development of Classicism," and "one of the most important artists of the Neoclassical Figurative revival movement."

Jon McNaughton is an American artist and Republican activist. He is known for his paintings depicting American conservative political figures, in particular prominent Republicans, and Christian imagery.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Marvel at Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney". Foster's Daily Democrat. January 31, 2013. Retrieved February 19, 2024.
  2. Jackson, Donald Dale (September 1995). "Daring Deeds, Bold Dreams, in a Land Removed from Time". p. 73. Smithsonian .
  3. Bensimhon, M. (October 1992). "Living with Dinosaurs: Inside the Mind of a Man Who Makes Fantasy Seem Real". p. 54. Life . .
  4. Robinson, S. (1997). "James Gurney: Artist and Author Extraordinaire (b. 1958)". Rocks & Minerals . 72 (5): 335–338. Bibcode:1997RoMin..72..335R. doi:10.1080/00357529709605061.
  5. Parks, John (November 2006). "Fact & Fantasy: The Paintings of James Gurney". p. 43. American Artist .
  6. Gurney, James (October 20, 2009). Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist. Andrews McMeel. ISBN   978-0-7407-8550-4. LCCN   2009015708.
  7. Gurney, James (November 30, 2010). Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. Andrews McMeel. ISBN   978-0-7407-9771-2. LCCN   2010924512.
  8. "James Gurney: ARC Living Master". Art Renewal Center.
  9. "Art Renewal Center". February 21, 2012.
  10. Hendrickx, C.; Mateus, O.V. (2014). Evans, Alistair Robert (ed.). "Torvosaurus gurneyi n. sp., the Largest Terrestrial Predator from Europe, and a Proposed Terminology of the Maxilla Anatomy in Nonavian Theropods". PLOS One . 9 (3): e88905. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...988905H. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088905 . PMC   3943790 . PMID   24598585.

Further reading