During the same period, he worked as a background painter for the animated film Fire and Ice, co-produced by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta. Prompted by a cross-country adventure on freight trains, he coauthored The Artist’s Guide to Sketching in 1982. He studied archaeology at the University of California at Berkeley, receiving a degree in anthropology with Phi Beta Kappa honors. He is also a dedicated plein air (outdoor) painter and sketcher, believing that making studies directly from observation fuels his imagination.īorn in California in 1958, the son of a mechanical engineer, he taught himself to draw by reading books about the illustrators Norman Rockwell and Howard Pyle. He specializes in painting realistic images of scenes that can’t be photographed, from dinosaurs to ancient civilizations. James Gurney is the artist and author best known for his illustrated book series Dinotopia. His official website is and his blog can be found at Gurney Journey. He has a wife Jeanette, who is an artist, and two sons Daniel and Franklin. He won the Best of Show award in the 1989 World Science Fiction Convention. Gurney has illustrated backgrounds in animated films such as Fire and Ice ('83), illustrated covers of over seventy books and illustrated several articles for National Geographic magazine. Born in 1958, James Gurney is the creator of Dinotopia, both authoring and illustrating the four central books Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, Dinotopia: The World Beneath, Dinotopia: First Flight and Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara.

Dinotopia by James Gurney