James Gurney: Inspirational Professional Artist and Author Blog
Looking for some inspiration for your art work or any creative endeavor for that matter?
Look no further than James Gurney's blog! He is the artist and author of the popular Dinotopia series. This artist has a blog that discusses his art journey with clear and concise steps that walks you through his process of creating his illustrations.
I use this sight all of the time when I'm trying to figure out some tricky lighting or working on some new color schemes that I haven't tried before within my illustrations.
Gurney's blog can definitely get you motivated to learn more about traditional techniques for drawing, painting, and sculpture. He paints primarily in oil and also creates his own reference images, which is very important for an artist to be able to do that. How he does this is by creating a maquette ( a small preliminary model) to use for his own reference image so that he can create accurate lighting for his illustrations.
It's also a good idea to create a 3d model or sculpture so that you can move it around and look at it from different angles and be able to look at it from a different perspective. I always find that I can see more details and nuances with a 3d model than just with a 2d image.
I do the same thing for my illustrations, too, but instead I do it digitally. I am more of a 3d modeler. I use either 3ds Max or Google Sketchup instead of traditional sculpture like Gurney. However, he does inspire me to create more traditional sculptures to use for my reference.
Like Gurney when there is a pressing deadline sometimes I think I can do the illustration without a 3d model for reference. If I don't though I always regret it. So I try to make myself at least create a rough geometric model in 3ds max or Sketchup. It really doesn't take me that long to set up a basic scene, and then I just add the lighting in 3ds Max for realistic light and shadows.
If you don't have accurate lighting to use as reference for your images than your illustration will look off. In other words it won't look right and lighting is not easy to do by memory alone, it's extremely difficult to do. That's why it's always better to have reference and being able to create your own is the best way to go. This way you can set up your reference exactly the way you want it.
Here is a link to Gurney's website: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/
Here are some images below that he has created for his popular Dinotopia series.
 Gurney created a maquette to use as reference for the illustration above. Here is the link for his process of creating the model: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2009/07/utopiales-poster-part-3-maquette.html
I really love Gurney's use of light and color within these illustrations. I'm definitely motivated to create some master copies of his work to use as research for some of my own studies.
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