It was feeding time. She was hungry. Bits of hay and drool dropped onto my Moleskine watercolor sketchbook. 
Every once in a while, when she heard Lenny’s voice outside, she let out a powerful moo that resonated through the whole barn. I could see into the ridged, tan tunnel of her mouth, and feel the hot, moist blast of breath.
He was a prodigious student at the Derby School of Art and the Royal Academy before moving to Montreal and then to the U.S.A. In addition to his historical work, he is a skilled plein-air painter. Many of the small oil studies he made for a public television series are included in the exhibit.
For those in south Florida, I'll be giving a digital slide presentation at 3:00 p.m. today at the Norton Museum of Art, followed by a booksigning. Hope to see you there. Bring the kids and bring your books to be signed. The signing is at 4:00 (there will be books and a poster available there, too).
Here's the new Estonian edition of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara.
As I painted the fallen stone face on the right side of the picture, I was thinking of Percy B. Shelley’s 1818 sonnet “Ozymandias,” which describes a traveler’s encounter with a colossal ancient statue in the desert: “Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies.”
The inscription on the stone at the lower left echoes Shelley’s theme of the mute arrogance of a vanished civilization. The phrase says “EVERLASTING DOMINION” in Dinotopian footprint alphabet, ancient Greek, and Aramaic (written with Hebrew letters).
A city slicker buys a bull calf from some country bumpkins, wishing to save the poor animal from becoming veal. He ties the lead rope to his waist against the urgings of the farm kids.
The calf drags the humane man through fences and fields, until the man cuts the creature loose and sells him cheap to be made into meat. 
Finally Lenny told me the secret: you push down on his hind end, while pulling forward on the lead rope. “I’ll make a farmer of you yet,” Lenny said as we headed down the dirt road.
The calf and his mother will be on the farm all summer. I’ll keep you posted about future animal stories.
“Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney” contains over 50 original oil paintings, along with preliminary sketches, plein air studies, scale maquettes, and dinosaur fossils. This will be the first venue to show the sculpt of the Protoceratops Bix made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
There will be a whole family day celebration on Sunday June 6 from 1:00 to 5:00 with live animals and activities. And there will be events going on all around town during the whole summer. The exhibition will be up through September 5. Call 561. 832.5196 for more information.
