Quote of the Day by James Gurney: "Working from imagination and from observation are indispensable to each other"
by https://www.creativebloq.com/author/ian-dean · Creative Bloq
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Source: James Gurney interview with The Epoch Times, 2010, discussing Colour and Light and his approach to imaginative realism; Gurney also published the interview on his Gurney Journey blog.
For an illustrator famous for inventing an entire world, James Gurney has a surprisingly strong attachment to reality; we saw that when he shared easy-to-learn art tips for turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Working from imagination and from observation are indispensable to each otherJames Gurney
Gurney is best known for Dinotopia, his richly imagined series of paintings and books about a lost civilisation where humans and dinosaurs live side by side, but look closely and you start to see how much real-world observation holds all that invention together. Gurney studies things, properly studies them, and that habit feeds directly back into the worlds he creates.
In an interview about his book Color and Light, Gurney explained that working from imagination and working from observation were “indispensable to each other”. He couldn't spend too long painting from imagination without going outside and looking at the real world again, but equally, he never wanted to become someone who only painted what was in front of him.
I feel like that advice is relevant to anyone making art now, when reference is everywhere, and it's incredibly easy to either lean on it too heavily or avoid it altogether because using reference can somehow feel like admitting you can't draw. Gurney's approach is more interesting than either extreme. The things you observe don't just give you something to copy later; they become part of the visual vocabulary you draw from when you're inventing something that doesn't exist.
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Once you start imagining things, you look at reality differently. You're no longer just looking at a tree; you're noticing the shapes you could exaggerate, how the branches might frame a composition, and the strange colour sitting underneath the green leaves. You start seeing possibilities in ordinary things because you're looking at them as an artist who wants to transform them.
With Gurney's approach, observation isn't simply the research stage before the real creative work begins, and imagination isn't something you switch on once you've finished studying. Each one changes what you get from the other. And that's why Dinotopia feels like a good example of the whole idea. It's an imaginary world full of things that never existed, yet its believability comes from Gurney having spent so much time looking at things that do.
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The more closely you look at reality, the more convincing your imagination can become – and, perhaps more importantly, the more interesting reality becomes when you look at it with the intention of changing it.
Read James Gurney's blog, Gurney Journey, for more advice, insights and inspiration.
Our favourite James Gurney art books:
Andrews McMeel Publishing
Color and Light: a Guide for the Realist Painter (volume 2)
Andrews McMeel Publishing
Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (volume 1)
Andrews McMeel Publishing
The Artist's Guide to Sketching: the Classic Book About Making Art on Location
Dover Publications
Dinotopia, a Land Apart From Time: 20th Anniversary Edition
3DTotal Publishing
Artists' Master Series: Color and Light
Dover Publications
Dinotopia, the World Beneath: 20th Anniversary Edition