Spending Time with Dinotopia

The weekend before I took a mini road trip to visit the Philadelphia museum, the Brandywine River museum, and the Smithsonian American Art museum, I went to see Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center in Connecticut.

Waterfall City is breathtaking in person! The painting is very large, maybe 5 feet long? (Just a guess!)

I've been an enormous fan of James Gurney ever since I first saw his work in my sophomore year in college. His books, Color & Light and Imaginative Realism are the illustrator's bibles. When I first read through Dinotopia, I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Every page was alive! But I could have never imagined what those paintings would look like in person.

Up close, even in his more tightly rendered paintings, Gurney is somewhat painterly

There were over 50 paintings in the exhibit, each one begging for all of your attention. I had to tear myself away from each painting in order to make sure I got to see them all. The vivacity of the characters, the glow of the paint, the sheer size of them! I never expected so many of Gurney's paintings to be so large!

As I attempted to control my fanaticism and maintain a cool exterior, I was practically drooling over every brush stroke. I filled several pages of my notebook attempting to decipher how Gurney painted each illustration, analyzing as I went along. I filled in the gaps using what I already know about his methods from his videos and books, and from my own experience painting.

I took a couple hundred photos, and as I said there were over 50 paintings in the exhibit. Whittling them down for a few to show a few points for this blog is nearly impossible. But here's my best shot...

Thin, brushy darks glow when you get up close.

Pencil showing through

Gurney's colors are more saturated in person then they appear in print - hence the glow of his paintings in real life. He often paints very thin, to the point where sometimes pencil lines showing through can do some of the detail work for him. (Note: many of his Dinotopia paintings are done in a particular style using oil washes. I'm talking about his more finished, traditional looking oil paintings still retaining some of the thin application)



Gurney paints with a wide variety of edges, allowing soft subtleties here and crisp punches there. Perhaps I'm stating the obvious here, but edge work is something I'm particularly paying attention to lately in my own paintings, so I was really drawn to his use of edges to create depth and focal points. The more I study edges, the more I find that they are really the key to reproducing the way the human eye works, the way we actually see, in order to create a more convincing illusion (in terms of depth, focus, and the actual rendering of a variety of surfaces).

See how it all comes together from a distance? The girl below can be seen here on the bottom left.

Letting the paint do the work!

Particularly, I've been enamored with the ability of masters to leave such unresolved edges at times. I have the tendency to "smooth out"and blend edges in forms that I assume are soft, such as fabrics and skin. However, look at how Gurney leaves a single, hard brush stroke as the highlight on the face above. When you get up close to the painting it stands out, but when you step back (or see the reproductions) it blends in on it's own! Gurney is a master at painting just enough!

Once again, letting the paint do so much of the work & the eye can fill in the rest

Look how crystal clear the foreground elements are to the background crowd

Up close they're nothing more than suggestions of figures!

Gurney is a genius at painting just what needs to be painted, and letting the calligraphy of his brush and the eye of the viewer do the rest. He leaves so much of his illustrations unresolved, just hinting at a person or crowd in the background. A few brush strokes can represent an entire face, a single ambiguous stroke for a hand. He simply saves his crisp edges and values for the punch line of the painting - whatever is important.

One of my absolute favorites. Fell in love with this painting as a reproduction, and seeing it in person made me fall head over heels. What a composition - and the mood! It feels like a lived in world.

This is the tip of the iceberg here. I'm just going to share a few more photos for your own enjoyment and analysis. James Gurney is a living master, so I encourage you to check out his (very inexpensive) educational videos in addition to his books. I've learned a lot from watching him work, and he is a well spoken teacher.

This painting stood out to me because of how Gurney handled such a complex & dense scene. Looks like he almost painted the forest the way he might if he was doing a plein air painting!

You can tell here that he painted very thinly until he hit the opaques mixed with white. Look how simple the foliage behind the T-Rex is!