Life Lessons from Dinosaurs
Art from Dinotopia plus whimsical wisdom
James Gurney
This weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.
Blog Index
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Blog Archive
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2009
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June
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- The Deep Sea Diver
- Mystery Artist: Water Lilies
- The Elgin Marbles and the Parthenon
- Church and the Mirror
- Blackfriar Pub
- Daguerre, Painter
- Tor Gallery
- Rear View Tip
- Sal Westrich
- Pen Disaster
- Costumes, Part 2
- Costumes, Part 1
- Too-Smooth Tones
- Waterhouse in London
- Sargent by Herford
- Creature Design Workshop Update
- The Anatomy of the Ear
- Two Things to Remember
- Puttin’ on Daubs
- ABC: Harvard Depository
- Irish Music Party
- Csont and New Urbanism
- Brush Washer
- Clotheslines
- Abe in Two
- Genesis by R. Crumb
- Transparency of Foliage
- Style
- Teachers Reworking
- Dan’s Squeezebox
- Lawrence Summers
- Ancient Pixel Knowledge
- Catcher in the Rye Cover
- The Düsseldorf School
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June
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Color and Light Book
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Contact
You can write me at:
James Gurney
PO Box 693
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
or by email:
gurneyjourney (at) gmail.com
Sorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.
James Gurney
PO Box 693
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
or by email:
gurneyjourney (at) gmail.com
Sorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.
Permissions
All images and text are copyright 2020 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.
However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.
However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.
22 comments:
I love this.
Way cool! So many questions:
1. Your hands? (I consider myself fairly ambidextrous, but this is on another level.)
2. Or one of yours, the other someone else's?
3. If not your hands, whose?
4. Why upside down?
5. Was music present while sketching or added later?
6. Ink in one brushpen, water in the other?
7. "Abe in Two"...double meaning? Two minutes? Two hands? All of the above?
7. Pencil underdrawing?
The randomness of your blog is so much of its charm. From Crumb/Genesis to piano/Abe in 24 hours...
Haha. This is great! I use to work as a caricature artist and I once saw a guy doing a caricature of someone with both hands, however everything was perfectly symmetrical.
Thanks, Steve and Jean. Yes, that's my left hand (which doesn't know what my right hand is doing). The Mozart piano sonata was playing in the background to cover up my wheezing. No layin, just a light rectangle for the outside image frame. I drew upside down because I'm a Vaudeville wannabee--only 100 years too late. Yes, two hands, two minutes, and too confusing.
jaw... on... floor...
That was amazing to watch!
Haha, great stuff!
Your comment about your left hand not knowing what your right is doing reminds me of an interesting video I saw that showed how separate our two brain hemispheres can be.
The video showed a man who, through an accident of some sort, had the connecting tissue between the two hemispheres severed, which meant his left side wasn't aware of the right side, and vice versa.
They had him try and put together a puzzle, first with the right hand, then the left. The right hand had no problem solving the simple puzzle, and breezed through it. The left hand though, was constantly hesitating, fumbling, and took several attempts before it finally solved it. At one point during the left hand's test, the right hand actually tried to join in to help, which caused the left hand to actually bat it away.
Weird stuff, indeed.
LOL, i need to add this one to my bag of tricks, i don't think i could get my left hand to cooperate though. The whole upside down thing is just over the top ;)
Impressive as always Mr. Gurney!
Now this is great midday entertainment! Thanks for posting it. How many more tricks are up your sleeve? :)
See, that's why we have two hands instead of 1!
Hey Jim--maybe it's time to bring in your left foot. I wonder how that might work--maybe a Bach fugue for accompaniment.........
I paint with both hands at the same time, and you are the only other person I have ever seen do it. I find though that jobs that require strength or mindless application are usually done with my right, and delicate tasks or ones that require the up-most skill are executed by my left. Do you find the same?
A friend of mine was taught by Vladimir Nabokov at Cornell. She said that taking notes in his class was impossible. He would write a sentence on the chalk board with a piece of chalk in each hand. The left hand would begin at the beginning of the sentence, and the right hand at the end of the sentence and the two pieces of chalk would meet in the middle. (Effectively his right hand would not only write in cursive backwards, but the letter and word order were reversed!)
I am a gymnast and a gymnastic coach. We spend a lot of time thinking about bi-lateral symmetry as well as asymmetry. We all have dominant directions to twist, very few gymnasts twist both directions. (Shawn Johnson is one) Also, most gymnasts when they fall, fall on their less dominant side, protecting their more dominant side.
Wow! Generally I avoid using my left hand to keep my stuff from being smeared around. I have switched hands when painting, though. This sometimes confuses people.
I gotta say that Abe looks more like Abe when he's upside down than when he's right side up.
There's a lot of guitar hero stuff on youtube, but I've not seen that many drawing hero stuff!
Only one other example I can think of, from the french author of the graphic novel "Alan's war".
In fact, that whole book was drawn this way:
Emmanuel Guibert
Ok, time to join the circus. haha
That was amazing!
Hmm..the mild ambidexterity I referred to doesn't measure up: I throw left-handed, draw right handed. BUT, when housepainting, I can park the ladder under a window and paint the trim with either hand. Hardly worth mentioning...
Oh now you're just showing off.
:)
Nice stuff.
Great!
Do you get notification of these comments long after the original date of the post. I hope so because this is the logical place for this comment.
I have a question: Drawing and painting look to be so very easy for you that I wonder that it doesn't get boring because there is no challenge. Art is about the only thing I never lost interest in because I am always learning and it is forever challenging. But for you, my god you can do anything and you are interested in everything. So you still love it even though it appears easy to you?
BTW, I am a very long time fan. I have had Dinosaur parade hanging in my bedroom prominently above the bed for 15 years.
Hi, Susan, yes, I do get notification of any comments on back posts. Thanks for your kind comments. Actually, I just try to make it look easy, and I guess I should have showed all my outtakes and goofups for this Abe in Two. They were pretty funny (and pathetic), but part of the fun.
I am a little bit ambidextrous because I started out with my left hand. And yes, I am interested in everything. In a way that's both a blessing and a curse.
HAHA. It's like your right hand is telling your left hand to get out of the way. See how your left hand backs down when the right gets into its space.
Man, It took me until 1:01 to realize you were doing the face UPSIDE DOWN.
The same exact moment for me too. Funny. That looked like choreography, neat.
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