Station Points 31ABOUT JAMES GURNEY
James Gurney has worked for almost 40 years
as an illustrator for magazines such as National
Geographic, Scientific American and Ranger Rick.
He wrote the Amazon bestsellers Color and Light
and Imaginative Realism, as well as four illustrated
adventure books set in the fantastical world of
Dinotopia. Gurney has a dinosaur named after
him: Torvosaurus gurneyi, and he painted the
World of Dinosaurs stamps for the U.S. Postal
Service. Two of James Gurney’s dinosaur paintings
are currently on exhibit in a natural history art
show called Focus on Nature at the Roberson
Museum and Science Center in Binghamton,
New York through January 27, 2020.Glazed Impasto
Once a painting is started, you can build up
impastos with oil and apply a glaze to them when
they dry. Thick paint on its own takes weeks to
dry, but if you mix a drop of cobalt drier into the
white, it will make it dry in a day or two. The
glaze should only be applied to a thoroughly dry
passage, and it should be a runny mixture that
sinks into the pits around the impastos, making
them come forward even more.
T. rex in Forest, oil, 18 x 14" (46 x 35½ cm)
A lone tyrannosaurus emerges from a
dark forest. For this painting, I limit the
chroma to warm grays and browns. The
pattern of light and shadow is informed
by referencing scale maquettes set up
in sunlight. I oil up the surface before
using the palette knife to make the
thin strokes for the palmetto fronds.
Oiling up makes the dry paint surface
more receptive to new strokes. A light
covering of fur-like feathers covers his
neck, back and tail area. The feathers are
mainly painted with the knife.
Oiling Up
Oiling up (also known as “Oiling out”) means
rubbing a little painting medium over a dry
surface of paint that you worked on earlier. The
oil layer makes the paint surface more receptive
to the new layer of wet paint, so that it will look
like it was all done at the same time. Without
oiling up, the new paint application goes on too
dry. You can apply the oil medium with a clean,
lint-free rag or a large brush and then remove
most of it. I use an alkyd painting medium for
oiling up, but you can use a regular medium.
Waxed Paper
When I need a random,
rough texture, I sometimes
bunch up waxed paper and
use it to transfer oil paint.
Because waxed paper is non-
absorbent, the oil paint floats
on the surface and transfers
easily. I use it on the painting
of the T. rex in the forest to
begin to establish the rough
surface of the ground, before
conditioning the texture
further with the brush.@jamesgurneyart