World of Arts: Best Artist, James Gurney

James Gurney at his studio - Photo by: jamesgurney.com

We have learned from few wonderful watercolour artists in the previous article. Here, in order to gain more knowledge, let see another wonderful painter that work on various media include watercolour. Instead of focusing on how he is doing his watercolour technique, there’re few more important things we can learn from him – the creation of the scene.

Even though more popular with his creation of dinosaur scenes, James Gurney actually can create almost any scenes through his wonderful techniques. He will do some research about the scenes he is going to create – the objects, the lights, shadows, and the atmospheres through different approaches. From that he is able to produce a realistic picture (for any scene he wants).

With Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies. Photo by Tobey Sanford.

Researching at the Grand Canyon. Photo by: Tobey Sanford.

His drawings allow us to see sceneries of the lost world such as dinosaur’s land and ancient civilization; with the information provided by other researchers of palaeontologists and archaeologies. His work can be seen mostly through Scientific American and National Geographic Magazine. He also produced Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, which was published in 1992; showing more illustration of dinosaurs that living among human.

The best thing is; he is sharing his knowledge through many platforms; that is also become our great opportunity to learn many things from this wonderful artist. For fast learning of his ideas on how he built the sceneries for his paintings, you can follow his YouTube channel here. There are also a few books by him containing important information on how to produce realistic drawing. These include, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn’t Exist, Andrews McMeel, 2009 and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, Andrews McMeel, 2010.

Study of reflection. Photo by: theminiaturespage.com

Book; Color and Light by James Gurney.

Learn behind the scenes process on how he produced his illustrations from several sketches, built the maquettes, create the composition and finalize the drawings. That’s totally different from what we thought, that the painting process just a process of sketch and paint.

If you want to learn more about his techniques, there are also video guides available you can buy in the form of DVD and digital download. From these videos you can learn step by steps to do the drawings. He always shares many other knowledge during the painting process that make the videos more entertaining.

Image from Dinotopia, Desert Crossing. Photo by: James Gurney

Image from Dinotopia, Market Square. Photo by: James Gurney

To learn more about this wonderful painter, you can visit his website that will lead you many other resources produces by him. He also writes his daily blog that sharing more wonderful things about drawing and painting.

After going through many videos of drawings and paintings, I think James Gurney is one of the best painters that we need to learn from. His techniques will allow us to create our own technique base on the sceneries we want to create – that’s why I come out with this article first. There are many other good videos that we can learn out there that I will share in the next articles.