The experience of seeing how a driver communicates with draft horses inspired me when I painted this image of a Triceratops pulling a turnip cart. You'll note that there are no reins; the driver (and Bix) are using voice signals entirely to communicate with the Triceratops. The painting originally appeared in Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara and later in Imaginative Realism. 

You can own this original painting. It is currently available for sale at the Daniel Maghen Gallery in Paris.

Previous posts on GurneyJourney:
Spokewheeling (compositional principle using this painting)
Ground Driving (me walking behind two of the Belgians)

Thanks, Damian

Here's what Denison's journal looks like, where these drawings were recorded. This is built from cast latex, brass, and copper over a real antique book. I made it as a display prop for a Dinotopia art exhibition at the Smithsonian.

For me, making a map is the best stimulant for building worlds and telling stories.
Physical geography map, with emphasis on landform relief. Painted in oil on board.


Seafloor relief, shown in perspective, with the island lifted up to show the caves. Inspired by the 1960s seafloor renderings by Tibor Toth for National Geographic.


Expedition route map. I developed a rough version of this along with the story outline. The final is in oil, about the size of a postcard. The seafloor texture is drybrushed over white board, a fast way to work.


Another route map showing a close-up section of the eastern coastline. The locator map at upper left places the detail map in context.


Antique maps are more convincing if they're made with antique tools. This one is made with a dip pen and brown ink on smooth watercolor board. The watercolor washes around the coast were laid down first when it was in pencil stage.


Here's a close-up of the map above to show the graded hatching of the mountain reliefs, typical of engraved maps of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. Traveler's maps were often folded, so I  abraded some fold lines into the surface.


Here's a hand-drawn and hand-lettered city map drawn in ink, with a flourished title block and a "rubber stamp" suggesting its provenance in a museum collection. The lettering is not on an overlay, so I couldn't make mistakes. This is from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara.


City map of Chandara, showing organic street grid and canals. All sorts of street perspectives can be plotted from a master map like this.


Here's a close-up of the same city in Dinotopia. This is called a building plan, where the buildings are sliced away a little above the ground. Walls are lines and columns are dots. Note the fancy illustrated title block, an exuberant touch that expresses something about the confidence of the city.


I love computer tools, but at the same time I also love the risk and commitment required by dip pens, circle templates, triangles, ruling pens, ships curves, and parallel rules. I used them because I thought they would give the final result a more authentic flavor.

All of these maps have been exhibited in museum shows of Dinotopia artwork. Because they are hand-drawn and hand-painted physical objects, they take on a tangible presence, and they become valuable touchstones in the history and life of an intellectual property.

Here is an animated step-by-step sequence of a painting from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (2007). The painting shows a retired musical conductor named Cornelius Mazurka and his Therizinosaurus Henriette (left) surrounded by old musical instruments, with Arthur Denison and the Protoceratops Bix on the right.

(Direct link to animated gif) This way of painting involves doing a careful pencil drawing on illustration board, sealing it with acrylic matte medium, laying in transparent color, and then proceeding to the finished rendering, area by area, beginning with the center of interest.


EDIT: to answer Tom's suggestion, I've made the animation a lot slower. And Ben, I have added above the preliminary pencil thumbnail showing how I worked out the basic tonal design before getting models and shooting reference. In this case I didn't do a full charcoal preliminary, just this quick (but very helpful) tonal study.
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The original painting "Old Conductor" is currently on exhibit at NHIA in Manchester, New Hampshire through March 13.
Thanks to Stapleton Kearns and Lines and Colors for reviewing that exhibit.
Journey to Chandara signed from my web store and from Amazon

(Video link) Here's a video that tells the story of the making of Dinotopia, created for the 20th anniversary edition and the Lyman Allyn exhibition.

The exhibition called "Dinotopia: Art, Science, and Imagination" ends February 2 at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut. The show has more than 100 objects: original oil paintings, preliminary sketches, maquettes, and dinosaur fossils.

There's more good news. Another Dinotopia exhibition called "Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney" will have a short run from Wednesday, February 20 through Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester. That show will include Dinosaur Parade, Garden of Hope, Dinosaur Boulevard and many other classic images.
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The four Dinotopia books mentioned:
Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, 1992
Dinotopia: The World Beneath, 1995
Dinotopia: First Flight, 1999
Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, 2007