Thursday, August 22, 2013

Sketching Birds and Dinosaurs

At the county fair I had some wonderful encounters with avian dinosaurs. (Link to YouTube Video)
Here's the drawing that you saw me make in the video. By the standards of most animal drawing, I was pretty lucky to have the turkey pose that long.

I was impressed with how sweet tempered and curious this bird was. She was really interested in my brush pens.
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Live Stream: This Saturday at 7 Eastern in New York City at Concert Window Open.
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New Video: "How I Paint Dinosaurs"
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Art Supplies:
1/4 inch flat brush 
Moleskine watercolor notebook
Caran D'Ache watercolor pencils
Waterman Phileas red fountain pen 
Camera: GoPro HD Hero at 2 second intervals

7 comments:

ted said...

Great post James!
I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed "How I paint Dinosaurs."
It was very informative and thoughtful. I especially loved the maquette process. I didn't realize how fully you use sculpture to inform your illustrations.
I'm probably not alone in thinking that another volume would be fantastic. Heck, I'd probably buy 'em all if you did one every few months!
Thanks,

Ted

Jared Shear said...

All of these are really great James!

Unknown said...

Another great video,thanks James!
I was tantalised by the brief glimpse of the macaw sketches. I'm trying to get my lightweight portable setup sorted out, and wondered whether this was casein you were using? The steep angle of the tray suggested it couldn't be watercolour. (Apologies if I've missed the explanation somewhere)
Karl

Rob Kulas said...

Another fun video to watch and learn from.
What inks are you using to put into your water brushes and are they water soluble?

Rob K.

James Gurney said...

Rob K. Those are fountain pen inks, which are water soluble. If you don't want soluble inks, I would recommend one of the Japanese brush pens.

Karl, yes, that was watercolor, and at that angle, it does tend to spill out in my lap. But I wanted to get the working area as high up and close to the subjects as I could.

Thanks, Jared. And Ted, I really appreciate your faith in me. I'll keep trying to deliver new vids as I keep learning more.

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Anonymous said...

Not to bring the party down, but the more I interact with other species, the more insidious our treatment of them becomes to me. If 'superior' beings were to mass breed us for slaughter, we would consider it a crime and atrocity of mind blowing magnitude...even though it would be justified by the logic of the hierarchy we humans have established. Not to mention the other abuses we put them through.

Sorry for the tangent, but these animal videos you post get me to thinking about our interactions with them. Seems like they can sense your good will towards them.