LW: I know you’ve probably been asked this a thousand times, but how did the Dinotopia series come about? Both writing and painting spring from a deeper source that’s more like a dream experience. With the Dinotopia series, I wanted to write the story because the words were so intimately bound up with my visual imaginings. I was co-author of a book, called The Artist’s Guide to Sketching, which was published by Watson-Guptill in 1982, when I was 24 years old. JG: I have always loved writing just as much as making art. How does writing fit into the hierarchy of your favorite activities? LW: You also are a narrative and instructional writer. Observational work builds the visual vocabulary for imaginative painting. Much of Waterfall City is based on sketches that I did in Venice. For example, I traveled on a sketching trip to the Southwest desert to get inspiration for Dinotopia’s Canyon City. James Gurney: The plein air work gives me ideas for light and color that I use in my imaginative work.

How does your observational painting relate to your imaginative creations? Do you have a preference for one or the other? These are two genres often considered exclusive of each other. Lynn Woods: You’re both a plein air painter and illustrator of fantastic and ancient worlds. To learn more about his creative process, influences and non-art interests, which include riding a unicycle, read on in this Q & A between Gurney and Almanac Weekly’s Lynn Woods. He has exhibited at museums across the US, Canada and Europe, lectured widely, and also is an accomplished plein air painter.īorn in Glendale, California in 1954, Gurney has resided with his family in Rhinebeck since 1984. He has illustrated hundreds of sci-fi and adventure/fantasy book covers and published paintings recreating lost civilizations in National Geographic for more than a decade. Gurney has published eight books, including two artist’s how-to guides on technique. Paleontologists have praised the Rhinebeck artist for his accuracy: One scholar noted his knack for “giving the dinosaurs expressions I find believable…this has probably affected my own view of them.”īut Dinotopia is just one facet of a rich and successful career. Dinotopia won fans not only for its perfectly rendered imaginative vision, but also for its humanistic storytelling, which departed from the violence and dark worldview that often characterizes the adventure/fantasy genre. James Gurney’s exquisite paintings have brought to life ancient and fantastic worlds, including the Earth populated by dinosaurs in his famous Dinotopia series of illustrated books.

James gurney national geographic