The inspiration that came from researching these archaeological reconstructions led to a series of lost-world panoramas, including Waterfall City (1988) and Dinosaur Parade (1989). Starting in 1983, he began work on over a dozen assignments for National Geographic magazine, including reconstructions of the ancient Moche, Kushite, and Etruscan civilizations, and the Jason and Ulysses voyages for Tim Severin. Postal Service, most notably The World of Dinosaurs in 1996. He painted more than 70 covers for science fiction and fantasy paperback novels, and he created several stamp designs for the U.S.

Gurney's freelance illustration career began in the 1980s, during which time he developed his characteristic realistic renderings of fantastic scenes, painted in oil using methods similar to the academic realists and Golden Age illustrators. Gurney and Kinkade also worked as painters of background scenes for the animated film Fire and Ice (1983), co-produced by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta.

Prompted by a cross-country adventure on freight trains, he and Thomas Kinkade coauthored The Artist's Guide to Sketching in 1982. He then studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, for a couple of semesters. He studied archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1979. Įncouraged to tinker in the workshop, he built puppets, gliders, masks, and kites, and taught himself to draw by means of books about the illustrators Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell. Gurney grew up in Palo Alto, California, the youngest of five children of Joanna and Robert Gurney, a mechanical engineer. Gurney is also a paleoartist who depicts and restores in his paintings extinct fauna such as both avian and non-avian dinosaurs. Journal from an island utopia cohabited by humans and dinosaurs.

James Gurney (born June 14, 1958) is an American artist and author known for his illustrated book series Dinotopia, which is presented in the form of a 19th-century explorer's

Dinotopia gurney