Your Roving Arts Reporter

We're on our way to Colorado and Wyoming, ready to cover events as they unfold. Our little car is packed full of gouache, casein, watercolor, fountain pens, coffee, and peanut-butter-flavored granola bars.

Hitting the road next week

Here is the cover of the sketchbook I'm currently traveling through. I called it "Rest Stop," following my custom to title the sketchbook with words that appear on the first page. The sketch on the first page is captioned the 'Heavenly Rest Stop Café.'

I'm dreaming about the road, because Jeanette and I will be leaving next week on a car trip from New York to Wyoming and Colorado. As much as possible, we'll be taking the old highways through small town America, sketching as we go.


I'll be one of the guests at the SKB Workshop in Dubois, Wyoming, September 14-19. There will be a lot of plein-air, landscape, and wildlife painters there in an informal setting.

Also, I'll be traveling out to California in November as a guest of the CTN Animation Expo. I've visited once before, and it's a very interesting gathering of animation artists.

If you can't make it to either of those events, I'll be reporting along the way from the blog.

Exhibitions and Events

I'd like to announce some upcoming exhibitions and events that I'll be participating in.

An exhibition of 25 paintings called "Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney" will be on view next month at the New Hampshire Institute of Art . The exhibition will include Dinosaur Parade, Garden of Hope, Dinosaur Boulevard and many other classic images. It will be up for just three weeks, from Wednesday, February 20 through Wednesday, March 13, 2013. The opening at 5:00 on February 20 is free and everyone is invited. I'll be presenting an illustrated lecture about the making of Dinotopia at 6:30 pm that evening. The cost to attend the lecture is $20, and there will be a book signing afterward. More at New Hampshire Institute of Art

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On February 21, I'll be presenting a lecture in Massachusetts at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The lecture, Q&A and book signing starts at 7:00. Contact Professor Brian Moriarty for more information. Photo US News.

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From April 10-14 I'll be one of the featured guests at the 2nd Annual Plein Air Convention and Expo in Monterey, California. I'll be doing a talk on composition, as well as painting in oil outdoors in the picturesque environs, alongside the rest of the faculty and participants. It's a great opportunity for shop talk while practicing in the field.
April 10-14, Plein Air Convention and Expo, Monterey-Carmel, California
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Later in April, over the weekend of the 25th, I will be one of the guests at the Art of the Portrait Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. This event brings together many of the top portrait artists from around the world, painting side by side from live models and explaining their process. My lecture will will be about drawing portraits "in the wild" from candid models, and I'll be on a panel talking about blogging. (Photo Charles Walls) 
April 25-28. Art of the Portrait Conference, Atlanta
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In June I will be one of the guests for a couple of days at Illustration Master Class in Amherst Massachusetts. The spaces are filled for this year, but there is a wait list.

June 12 (or so) 2013 Illustration Master Class, MA

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And finally, don't miss the museum exhibit currently on view through February 2 at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut. It's called "Dinotopia: Art, Science, and Imagination," with over 100 pieces of original Dinotopia art, maquettes, and fossils. It's completely different from the "Fantastical Art" show, so if you see one show, the other will have entirely different surprises.

Dinotopia: Art, Science, and Imagination ends February 2.

Part 5 / Pteranodon Hatchling Finish

(Continuing the Pteranodon series) Here's the final painting of the young Pteranodon, incorporating Dr. Bennett's corrections. 

The pterosaur has just hatched from a soft-shelled egg, and is resting on a bed of crushed ferns. The painting is in oil, using the paint thinly and mostly transparently. The oil stayed wet enough to allow a shallow-focus treatment of the distance, something that often appears in wildlife photos. 

Since Ranger Rick is mainly a photo magazine, I deliberately used photographic effects (even though I had no photo to look at for reference) because I wanted the art to blend with the rest of the magazine.

When we passed through the Washington, DC area a few weeks ago, we stopped by the National Wildlife Federation headquarters to pick up the painting and to show the editors "Pterry" the Pteranodon maquette that I used for reference.

We shared the painting and the maquette at some of the art schools we visited on our recent southeast tour, including SCAD Atlanta, (photo by Rick Lovell). 

I'll be doing reports from the various art schools in future blog posts.

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Please come to my lecture and booksigning at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut, on Saturday October 13 at 2:00. 

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Ranger Rick October issue

Part 1: Pteranodons / Thumbnails

Part 2: Pteranodons / Maquette

Part 3: Pteranodons / Step by Step

Part 4: Pteranodons / Hatchling Sketches

Illustration Master Class 2011

Illustration Master Class was in full swing in Amherst, Massachusetts, when we arrived yesterday.


Here's student Mark Helwig with his dragon reference maquette, made of Super Sculpey. He told me that it's his first time using Sculpey. There are about 100 students from all over the world, some using digital, some traditional, and some combining the two.

The workshop lasts a week, and at this stage the students have already gotten their sketch approved, gathered reference, and transferred the drawings onto the painting surface. Many of the students are professionals themselves, but everyone is trying something new, sharing techniques with each other, and staying up late hours.


IMC is team-taught by a faculty of guests and regulars, so students get plenty of opinions (not always agreeing opinions) about their sketches. I'm here for a day and a half as a guest speaker.

Back row: me, Greg Manchess, Dan Dos Santos, Irene Gallo, Scott Allie, Jeff Mack, Donato Giancola. Front Row: Adam Rex, Scott Fischer, Iain McCaig, Rebecca Guay, Julie Bell, and Boris Vallejo (Peter d.S. was away on a phone call).

 
Here's a sketch of Mo Willems, who did a slide show, explaining the anatomy of a children's picture book.

Peter de Sève did a wonderful presentation about his life in caricature and character design. Later on, Rebecca (left) treated us to a faculty supper at a Chinese restaurant, where Peter and Mo showed us other ways to think about those take-out containers.

Piccoli Ritratti

Here are some little portraits of some of the amazing people we had supper with in Lucca:

1. The incomparable comic artist Massimiliano Frezzato, creator of I Custodi del Maser, 2. Terry Brooks, author of Sword of Shannara, 3. Emanuele Vietina, vice-director of Lucca Comics and Games, and 4. Steve Perrin, game designer for Dungeons and Dragons and RuneQuest.


Also: 1. Skippy, 2. Mandy, 3. Athos, and 4. Andrea. These sketches were all made with water-soluble colored pencils, and all were drawn around the supper table (except the one of Skippy, which was a workshop demo).

Lucca Comics and Games

Finishing Lucca Demo

I painted for another two hours on the charity auction demo, here at the festival of comics and games in Lucca, Italy.

The changes are mostly corrections in the drawing: fixing the windows, and tinkering with the placement of the dinosaur’s legs.


My reference was this colored pencil sketch, and I hope to do more of these tomorrow after the rain clears.


It was a great pleasure to meet and paint next to an artist I’ve admired for many, many years, Phil Hale. He painted a whole series of images based on rubbing out of black oil paint.

Lucca Comics and Games

Cafe Culture

Jeanette and I have been mooching Wi-Fi from coffee shops like everyone else does.
She did this sketch of a cafe patron using a Micron brush pen.


I guess we’re part of an alarming trend. In one Starbucks, we noticed 14 patrons. Eleven of them were busy with laptops, two were interested in hand-held devices, and one was a kid playing quietly with an empty coffee cup.

Nobody spoke, except to say, “Do you mind if I plug this in?”

Bob’s Big Boy

What better place for a double-deck hamburger than Bob’s Big Boy family restaurant in Burbank?


And what better person to enjoy it with, than Mark Frauenfelder, the guy who launched BoingBoing and Make magazine.


Built in 1949, this is the oldest Bob’s still standing. According to a bronze plaque out front, “it was designed by respected architect Wayne McAllister, incorporating the 1940s transitional design of streamline modern style while anticipating the freeform 50s coffee shop architecture.”
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More about Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing, Make Magazine. His new book is Made by Hand.
More about the history of Bob’s Big Boy. and on Wikipedia

Tomorrow we’ll return to sea monsters.

Arrested by the Art Police

I'm keeping one step ahead of the art police.

Arrested for bad perspective, poor value organization, tangencies and hard edges.

October 18 Lecture in Phoenix

Here's an announcement for an upcoming lecture at the Art Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. It's open to all at no cost. Click on the image to enlarge.

Heading Out to Pennsylvania and Ohio

Today we leave for another junket, starting with the elementary school of Andy Wales, frequent blog commentator and Art-By-Committe contributor. He has been teaching his students how to draw dinosaurs and design fantasy worlds. Link for his art teaching blog.

On Monday, April 6 I'll give a digital slide presentation "Dinotopia: Behind the Scenes" at the Columbus College of Art and Design. The event is open to the public is sponsored by the illustration department, and it runs from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 pm in the Joseph Canzani Auditorium. Link for more info.

Unicorns

Unicorns have been spotted in Toronto.

Coming to Philadelphia PA and Rockville MD

Saturday, February 14, Paleopalooza Event, Philadelphia
I'm thrilled to be part of the program this weekend for Paleopalooza, a family event at the Academy of Natural Sciences, which will include live reptile shows, screenings of dinosaur movies, dinosaur drawing workshops, and me, talking about how I came up with Dinotopia and what goes into making the pictures. The event goes on all weekend, but my illustrated talk in the auditorium starts at 1 pm and is called Dinotopia: Fact and Fantasy. A Dinotopia book signing will follow the talk.



Monday, February 16, Rockville, Maryland
The Montgomery College Arts Institute in Rockville, Maryland will be hosting me on Monday, February 16 at 12:00 noon in the Theatre Arts Building, Arena. I'll give a digital slide lecture showing how to make a realistic picture of something that doesn't exist, like a fantasy subject or a historical scene. I'll cover topics like research, maquettes, perspective, color keying, and costumes. The talk is open to the public, and there will be a book signing and some original paintings to look at afterward. For more information, contact Ed Ahlstrom in the Art Department at 240.567.7639.

The little listing on the left called "Upcoming Appearances" has some of the other events this spring. I'm sorry, the botanical illustration workshop in Denver in March is sold out. I'm tentatively coming to Toronto later in March. If you live nearby, I hope to meet you at one of them.

Return Flight

I'm back from Malta, Tunisia, Morocco, and Gibraltar. Here's the reaction of my Yorkshire airline seatmates to my three-week old unwashed clothes, scraggly beard, and monkey urine aroma.

I'll explain the monkey urine tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving holiday to all, Americans or not, and thanks to Jeanette for keeping the blog going during my rambling.

North Africa Trek

Today I’m leaving for a month-long sketching expedition to North Africa. My traveling companion is the writer/adventurer Alan Dean Foster. I first got to know Alan over 20 years ago when I painted covers for his science fiction novels. Later he wrote two novels in the Dinotopia universe.

Over the years Alan has sent me postcards from places like Timbuktu, Pitcairn Island, Great Barrier Reef, Papua New Guinea (above) and Oouagadougou. This time I’m thrilled to be joining him. I’ll be researching a couple of different projects and sketching in watercolor and gouache. We’re going first to Malta, and then Tunisia and Morocco.

I’m leaving the laptop home with my wife Jeanette, who will be posting regularly to the blog, using content that I worked up in advance. Maybe she will share a few of her own sketches. If I can figure out the tech, I’ll try to send home some pictures from Internet cafes along the way before returning on November 26.

Postcards from Paris

Dinotopia: Un Voyage a Chandara, published by Editions Fleurus, was spotlighted by Jean-Philippe Lefèvre for the program called "Un Monde de Bulles," on the Public Senat channel. The makeup lady had to do a lot of work to cut down on the glare from my head.

The program was about fully illustrated fantasy stories in the context of "bande dessinees," the uniquely French version of comics, usually presented in oversize, full-color books. They're a huge market here, and hard to find in America. The program will air in November or December.

The program is hosted inside the magnificent Senate building, next to the Luxembourg gardens. Imagine an American national TV program on comics originating from inside the U.S. Capitol! Afterward Mr. Lefèvre toured us through the Senate chambers, including the inner sanctum where laws are made, surrounded by ornate sculpture and decoration.

We visited the purveyor of comics and fantasy art Galerie Daniel Maghen with our friend Olivier Souille, who works there. Olivier and his brother Laurent are also the authors of the recently published L' Univers of Dragons.

Two more average tourists on the Ponte des Arts.

We met Marc Bourgne creator and illustrator of Frank Lincoln, Voyageur, and Barbe Rouge.

I had fun at a booksigning at the science fiction specialty bookshop Labyrinthes in Rambouillet, outside of Paris. I also signed at the FNAC Les Halles. The French edition will be officially available on 10 October.

Maison d'Ailleur's Opening Fête

The tall shaggy creatures of Yuocland arrived from their high pastures to attend the opening of the Verne/Dinotopia exhibition.

Also there were performances by the eccentric troupe Gramoulinophone.

A few regular visitor/commentators to Gurney Journey made the trip. At left: Jeanette, me, "Dragonladych," "cegebe," Dragonlady's mom, and Jerome. Later I met John Howe for the first time, and I greatly admire his work.

The new passageway between the two museum spaces was opened with speeches and giant balloons, which were kept aloft by many hands until they popped with dull booms.

Inside Maison d'Ailleurs was the exhibition "Retour à Dinotopia," with 53 new paintings from Journey to Chandara. (Photo above by Olivier Allenspach). The exhibit filled three floors of the museum, with maps blown up to gigantic size on the floors, and with films, miniatures, and behind-the-scenes panels. The show will be on view until March 8, 2009.

But the really big event was the opening of the new Espace Jules Verne, the preeminent museum collection of Verniana. When you cross the new passageway, you enter the adjoining building in what looks like a large library, with thousands of rare editions of Jules Verne and his followers, as well as American pulp magazines and posters.

Museum director Patrick Gyger shows me one of the glass cases of model vehicles from the various Verne novels.

The collection was generously donated by the Jean-Michel Margot, originally from Switzerland, and now living in North Carolina. I had the privilege of sitting with him for a supper of stag stew, and did this quick portrait.

I also made this on-the-spot sketch in the style of an old poster of Maison d'Ailleurs, the world's most wonderful departure point for extraordinary journeys.

Tunnel and Sabot

Here are two last sketches from Boucoiran, France. The image that really stuck with me as I explored the town was the way the train tunnel was cut directly beneath the old medieval village.

The problem was that there was no place to really see the view that was in the mind's eye. You'd have to sit directly on the tracks—not a good idea with 100-mile-per-hour trains whizzing through every hour or so. I was able to find a spot in a park off to the left, and had to imagine the view from this angle.

This idea of sketching from an angle that's different from what you actually see is an interesting challenge for a figure sketch group. We had a teacher at Art Center who had us look at a model and draw her from 90 degrees to the side.

Finally, here's a quick study of a sabot with the old colored pencil technique. Tomorrow: back to Switzerland.

Kitchen Table Portraits

One of the first people I met in Boucoiran was Diego, a neighbor who helps to fix things around the house for our host Eliane. When he came in and sat at the kitchen table, I was so struck by his interesting sun-weathered face, that I asked his permission draw his portrait.

I knew I only had about 15 minutes to work with, and I asked him just to keep talking, not to pose. In a situation like this you don’t want to haul out a lot of oil paints or watercolor equipment, so it’s convenient to have a set of watercolor pencils and a water brush. I used the Caran d’Ache Supracolor II pencils because they work nicely both with and without water.

The four colors you need for portraits are umber, russet, black and brown. I use two water brushes, one with plain water and one with a pre-mixed sepia color.

The paper is a Derwent sketchbook, like a Moleskine drawing book, with thick, smooth paper. It’s not really made for water, but it holds up OK.

Here’s another portrait, drawn the next day from a gentleman named Bluc Fouchaud, while he and his wife prepared supper for us.

You have to practice a lot with these pencils first to get used to what happens when you run water over your pencil work. Normally you’ll want to get the portrait half finished first to establish some tone before starting in with the water.

If you brush water over a full-toned drawing, it will get too dark right away. In the portrait of Mr Fouchaud, I established the light skin tone across the face quite early, and saved small details and accents for last.