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By: James Gurney,
on 7/30/2010
Peanut the donkey posed for me last evening after her munch of hay and her roll in the dust.
But the other donkey, Jezebel, wanted some attention too. She walked over and rested her heavy head on top of my sketchbook, wanting to be scratched on the top of her neck.
By: James Gurney,
on 6/28/2010
Until yesterday, I had never painted a living griffin before.
A magnificent specimen named China Blue Rockett posed for me during my hour-long demo on water-soluble colored pencils at Anthrocon.
I used an assortment of Caran d'Ache Supracolor 2 pencils. After a light lay-in, I scumbled a few colors and dissolved them with three Niji water brushes: one filled with clear water, another with a middle gray (the strokes on the sleeve), and another with black.
By juggling the water brushes, I kept the edge around the head soft, so as to suggest the fringe of fur without painting every hair.
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Anthrocon aka Furrycon
More on GJ on that colored pencil technique
Wiki on Griffins (or if you prefer the spelling: griffon, gryphon, γρύφων, grýphōn,, γρύπων, or grýpōn).
By: James Gurney,
on 5/18/2010
Note to commencement speakers: There are a few lines you might want to delete from your speeches. They’re nice sentiments, but we’ve heard them too many times already.
“I want to congratulate each of you on your journey.”
“Each of you has incredible talents.”
“This isn’t an end, but rather a beginning.”
“Always follow your passion.”
By: James Gurney,
on 5/2/2010
If you’re sketching without an easel or a drawing table, you have to hold your work at the most convenient angle.
This fellow artist at a sketch group shows an excellent posture for observational sketching from a seated position. She’s comfortably holding the book with her left hand while resting it on her crossed leg.
By holding the book at about 60 degrees, the book remains perpendicular to her viewing angle. This eliminates any danger of distortion caused by looking at the work foreshortened.
By holding the work as high as possible, close to her line of sight, she doesn’t have to tax her memory any more than necessary as she transfers her observation to her drawing.
In fact she doesn’t have to bob her head at all, an advantage when you’re drawing candid poses in public and you don’t want to draw attention to yourself.
Artists who hunch over a work laying flat in their laps make the job unnecessarily more difficult than it needs to be.¬
By: James Gurney,
on 4/25/2010
Here’s a pencil and watercolor sketch of the Erechtheum, an Ionic temple built on the Acropolis near the Parthenon in Athens. The porch on the left is supported by caryatid figures.
Sketching a famous subject like this is an extraordinary experience, because you can see the echo of this structure in so many other buildings that it has inspired. Only by drawing it do you fully appreciate it. All the proportions and details in this architecture seem perfect, which makes it impossible to capture in a hasty drawing.
A local came up to me and I asked her to write the name of it in Greek.
Wikipedia on Erechtheum
By: James Gurney,
on 4/20/2010
Usually when I visit the farm, each of the animals comes up to the fence to say hello.
Billy the black goat likes to be scratched behind the horns. Lucky the white goat wants to be rubbed where his horns would have been. Peanut and Joy, the donkeys, prefer to be patted on the neck and offered a little hay.
But on a recent afternoon, Bo, the young dairy bull, leaned against the fence next to me. He wouldn’t let Billy or Lucky or Peanut or Joy come near. When they approached, he lowered his horns and chased them away. 
He kept trying to lick my face with his disgusting long tongue. I stood just out of range.
Billy and Lucky were getting annoyed with Bo, so they challenged him to a butting contest. Even though they were much smaller, they had more experience.
Watch the video, and you'll see who won.
By: James Gurney,
on 4/6/2010
In 1987, when I was in Jerusalem, a film crew had taken over the American Colony Hotel. They were working on the movie called “Appointment with Death,” starring Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Peter Ustinov.
Mr. Ustinov (1921-2004) was sitting patiently waiting for a shot to be set up. Waiting is the fate of all movie actors. I noticed he was passing the idle hours with a sketchpad.
I had my sketchpad in hand, too, so I drew his profile. It was from a long way off and not a great sketch. During a lull, I asked the production manager if I could show it to him. Mr. Ustinov kindly signed it for me, adding “Mirror, mirror. Well done.”
Appointment with Death IMDB
Sir Peter Ustinov on Wikipedia.
American Colony Hotel.
By: James Gurney,
on 3/29/2010
How do you get a goat to pose for his portrait?
It sure helps when some of the kids from the farm keep him interested with a few handfuls of grain. This is Lucky. He shares the stall with Billy, who you met last summer.
By: James Gurney,
on 3/24/2010
Here’s a sketch of David, working in our creature design class last summer. He’s one of the regulars at the Grand Central Academy in New York. The sketch about 3 x 4 inches, drawn with water soluble colored pencils.
David told us his hat is made out of material from discarded couches.
By: James Gurney,
on 3/15/2010
Here's what the Calvin Theater looked like in 1995. The sketch is in pencil and marker.
By: James Gurney,
on 2/20/2010
Back in 1987, while on assignment for National Geographic, I got lost in old Jerusalem. 
I wandered down the narrow, twisting alleys. The sound of tapping hammers and the smell of contact cement hit me. Three guys sat in a little arched alcove making shoes. A boom box played Elton John.
They set up a plastic bucket for me to sit on and poured me a cup of tea. I pulled out my sketchbook and drew their portraits in pencil and ink wash.
By: James Gurney,
on 2/4/2010
Here's the Belgian filly Princess, a sketch I did nearly six months ago, July or so.
She's a big horse now, about the size of a standard riding horse. The farmer, Lenny, says she may end up bigger than her mom.
Here are those sketches from last spring when she was just two weeks old. The technique is water-soluble colored pencils and water-brushes, one of which was filled with dilute brown fountain pen ink.
By: James Gurney,
on 1/2/2010
Joy the baby donkey was a week old yesterday, so we stopped by Southlands Farm to see how she was doing.
Lenny let Peanut and Joy out of their stall. The baby has long legs and tiny hooves. She has discovered what fun it is to buck and prance. 
I held her while Lenny gave her some eye medicine. For those of you who are knitters, Jeanette designed and knitted the Icelandic sweater out of Lopi yarn. She made the hat in a modular design in cashmere, silk, and merino wool.
Lenny opened the gate so Joy could meet the goats and sheep for the first time. I sat on a bucket next to the feed trough and sketched her. 
Billy the goat came up to nibble on my sketchbook and shoelaces. You may recall that Billy was the model for our creature design class last summer. Now he has a thick coat of fur, and he likes it when I scratch him on the back of his neck.
Here are a few video clips to show you how well Joy has mastered her legs.
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If you would like to donate something to help support the Gentle Giants 4H Club of the Southlands Foundation, which Joy is a part of, please use the Paypal button at left, and I’ll pass on the funds to Lenny. He’s got a lot of mouths to feed.
By the way, Dan Gurney (musician on the soundtrack) will be performing with all-Ireland champion Dylan Foley at Club Passim in Boston, MA on Sunday, January 3rd at 4:30. He wrote the piece "Buster Takes a Walk" after a dog, but it goes with a donkey, too. More about the gig at Boston.com.
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Previously: Christmas Surprise, Goat Day at Woodstock School of Art.
By: James Gurney,
on 11/23/2009
A long line of cars led up to the border crossing as we returned from Canada. It seemed they were stopping and searching everyone.
Four guys in flak jackets searched a car in front of us, using mirrors on poles to look under the bumpers. They made the guy get out of the car, escorted him away, and then one of the officers drove off in his car.
I asked Doug for his passport. This time I wanted to make sure I presented the passports up front, rather than waiting for the officer to ask me for them.
I turned to Dennis. Last time the guard asked us four times if we had firearms, and when he asked Dennis directly, he just shook his head. This time he said he was going to speak up.
Tomorrow I'll tell you what happened.
By: James Gurney,
on 11/2/2009
"We are like children," said illustrator Aleksi Briclot (second from left). "Give us a pencil and some paper and we are happy and quiet." Center is J-S. Rossbach, Gilles Francescano and J-B. Monge. 
Mr. Briclot and Jean-Sebastien Rossbach, who collaborated on the fully illustrated Merlin, were drawing sketches as a team, one of them beginning the sketch and the other finishing it.
It was a great honor to meet artists like Leo, J.B. Monge (above, with me on his shoulder holding his pencil), Erlé Ferronnière, Didier Graffet, Manchu, Enki Bilal, and many others. 
I am touched also to meet students (such as Dmitri, above) and teachers from the art school Pivaut. 
The people from the city of Nantes were very gracious and generous to Jeanette and me. Thank you to Marie Masson who arranged the festival, to Patrick Gyger who put together the the Dinotopia exhibition, to Mr. Paul Billaudeau and Mr. Jean-Marc Ayrault for helping welcome Utopiales to the Cité Internationale des Congrès of Nantes, and to Madame Agnès Marcetteau of the Musée Jules Verne.
By: James Gurney,
on 10/27/2009
A ladybug shuttle took us to Terminal Z at JFK, where the Lepidopter was wreathed in steam and slowly test-flapping its golden wings.
But at the last minute Delta’s service rep barked out the announcement that there would be a service change. They switched to a Mayfly 4000. That meant an hour more standing around and sipping coffee, and it was a much more primitive ornithopter.
Liftoff was after sunset. We hit heavy turbulence, much to the displeasure of a school of guppy girls, who insisted on being dropped out the back so they could swim the rest of the way. The service carts kept banging my knees as I tried to sleep.
By: James Gurney,
on 10/21/2009
A few days ago, a thrush struck the window. She lay on her side for fifteen minutes, and then brought herself to her feet.
Little by little she turned to face the evening light. After an hour and a half of quiet containment, she disappeared into the night.
By: James Gurney,
on 10/19/2009
William Berry (1926-1978) was an animal artist who did few finished paintings, but many masterful field sketches.
For three summers, from 1954-1956, he worked in Camp Denali in Alaska, recording his observations of bear, lynx, moose, voles, and porcupines. 
In the margins of his sketches, he noted whether the sketches were from observation on the spot, or from memory later when he returned to his cabin——or sometimes a combination of both.
I devoted a tremendous amount of time and energy to simply recording the facts of animal life—hundreds of hours and thousands of drawings in the zoo or in the forests, on mountains, in deserts, or plains. A caribou, for example, is never going to hold still for you, and a photograph of him, though useful for many reasons, is never going to show him doing exactly what you want him to be doing for a particular illustration. You have to learn the beast inside-out and upside-down, so that you can put him together on the page from scratch.
By: James Gurney,
on 9/6/2009
A fun challenge for creature designers is to create a whole new being that is halfway between a human and something else. Mythology is full of composite creatures such as centaurs and minotaurs that combine parts of humans and animals. You can also infuse trees, vegetables, or manufactured objects with human traits.
Here are some designs for garden goblins. These started with a grocery bag full of sweet corn and ornamental gourds from a farm market.
The corn husks seemed like a logical material for their homemade costumes. I wanted them to look impish, so I also looked at photos of chimpanzees.
By: James Gurney,
on 8/29/2009
Sometimes I like to exaggerate a little when I'm out sketching to poke some fun at my fellow man (and at myself in the process).
By: James Gurney,
on 8/20/2009
We're staying for a couple of days in Stoddartsville, Pennsylvania. Our little cabin is right next to the Lehigh River, where we've been painting and rafting every day. Yesterday we met 91-year-old John Butler, who presides over a whole settlement of historic buildings.
On his front porch during a summer shower he told of his 25 years in the Navy and his hunting adventures in Alaska.
By: James Gurney,
on 8/6/2009
Yesterday Eric Colquhoun of Toronto asked to see the sketch I was doing in the previous post.
I should explain that I’m writing and illustrating an article on concept art for Imagine FX magazine, and I thought I'd give you a sneak peak. You'll definitely want to pick up a copy when it comes out in a few months. I’ll be sharing 25 tips showing how to design a “lived-in” future—a science fiction universe with a believable past.
One of the tips deals with vehicle design. We’ve all seen plenty of renderings of sleek, new vehicles, such as this ground effect skimmer. But how often do you see the rusty hulk of a futuristic vehicle?
I thought it would be a cool exercise to take this skimmer about forty years forward in time and rip off the outer body, leaving only the chassis and the fore and aft stabilizers.
As I sat on the sidewalk sipping my BJ Joe, I stared at the real Blazer chassis and imagined discovering this hulk in the desert, with the antigravity generator still working. Even though it’s rusted out and dented and stripped down, it’s still hovering a foot or so off the ground.
Jeanette didn’t want to draw an old chassis, so she used the 90 degree rule and faced across the street. She drew the scene in ballpoint and watercolor, incorporating a construction worker that she had drawn earlier in the day.
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Thanks to Kevin, the mechanic at Bob's Automotive for your helpful advice on chassis design, and thanks,Eric!
By: James Gurney,
on 8/2/2009
Fractals is a branch of mathematics that artists intuitively grasp because it appeals strongly to the pattern recognition part of the right brain. One of the principles of fractals is the concept of self-similarity. Many forms in nature repeat a certain structure or geometry at various levels of scale.
For example, this ginger root has bulbous branches that leave the main stem, and they tend to do the same thing as the branches get smaller, until the pattern degenerates at the smallest scale. 
Romanesco broccoli demonstrates the principle of self-similarity even better. Each spiraling cone is composed of smaller spiraling cones. (Click to enlarge).
In many ferns, the shape of the leaflet resembles the frond. Since this comes down to math, computers can easily invent self-similarity, and this component has given realism to CGI renderings of rocks, plants, clouds, and water, where the phenomenon appears everywhere. Check out the digital fern below, which "grows" as you scroll down.
Fractal fern, link.
Wikipedia on fractals, link.
Fern glossary and more photos at: link.
By: James Gurney,
on 7/23/2009
A few years ago my G3 Macintosh computer decided to crash. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it to start up. I lugged it into the car and brought it to Jerry, a computer repair man.
"Lazarus and I are going to have a little chat," Jerry said. He took the covers off everything and hooked up a tangle of wires.
"Will it ever work again,?" I asked nervously. "Hummmm, oh yeah," Jerry said.
I thought of all the letters I had written and all the photos I had taken. Down the drain. Stupidly, I hadn't backed up in a long time. Jerry mumbled a few incantations and fell into a deep reverie. 
Then for the next two hours, as he contemplated the carcass of Lazarus, I did what I always do when I'm deathly anxious: I sketched.
Eventually my computer came back from the grave. It made some nice noises and some lights came on. Narrow escape this time, I told myself.
By: James Gurney,
on 7/17/2009
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2999230124118604245-109047684841799954?l=gurneyjourney.blogspo
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You live in heaven. Love your donkeys.
Very nice portrait! I love donkeys, so I'm jealous of your opportunity to spend some quality time sketching them.
By the way, I heard that you're going to do some teaching for TAD.org? I'm a student (or TADpole, as we say) there, so hearing that news made me very excited!
I think James makes his own heaven and thankfully shares it with us. Heaven is what you make it, if you'll pardon the sanctimoniousness (if that's a word). Can't we all find our perfect world in the imperfect world in which we find ourselves? (I sure am full of it tonight, eh?)
I have a technical question for you. I am guessing that you lay in your pencil sketch first then add water color (or markers, or whatever). Do you touch up the image with a pencil afterward? It seems that your pencil lines remain remarkably clean with the color laid in.
Thanks again for sharing.
You have done a Great job, keep doing more work like this ! Thanks..
web logo design | business logo design | corporate logo design | custom logo design
Sorry for posting something completely off-topic, but I thought I definitely should share with you. I saw this note and trailer today: http://movies.ign.com/articles/110/1109514p1.html, which together with the upcoming Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness, the two reported 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea adaptations on the works, and what seems like an inevitable Dinosaur resurgence towards 2013, the 20th anniversary of Jurassic Park (which is slowly starting to take shape), a right time to get a Dinotopia feature film might just be drawing near. I certainly don't know the details of the existing project not having happened, but I didn't want to keep this to myself in case it had to do with timing and studio reluctance. Victorian and dinosaur films might happily converge in cinemas soon enough!
All the best!
Beautiful donkey painting, so cute.
Thanks, everyone.
Moai: Yes, I'll be doing a TAD presentation this fall, and we'll announce it soon.
Tyler: I do a quick pencil layin, then scrub some water-soluble colored pencil (black and brown), hit it with water, then come in with the pencils again over the dry surface.
Andres: There has been interest in Dinotopia from feature film producers lately, but only the early stages of discussion.
That's great to hear! In that case, may everything get sorted out sooner rather than later! Thanks for answering.