Customer Reviews

Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Length:: 0:24 Mins

If you are a regular reader of James Gurney's blog, Gurney Journey, you would expect nothing less. This book is as good as I expected. He dispenses his knowledge as freely as he does on his blog. Here's what he says about his own book from the introduction:

"This is not a book about figure drawing, anatomy, or perspective. It's not a step-by-step guide on how to draw dinosaurs. It's also not a recipe book for a particular paint technique, although all these topics are addressed in passing. What this book contains is a distillation of the time-tested methods that I've found to be most helpful for achieving realism in imaginative pictures."

If you haven't got the hint from the title, this book is about making your art real and believable. In every chapter, James Gurney shares with us what he learned when creating his paintings. There are topics on people, dinosaurs, architecture, vehicles, composition and his step-by-steps (not techniques but process). The tips he gives can be applied on other subjects as well.

The importance of research is emphasized and the amount of research he does really shows. While creating an illustration on ship wreckage for National Geographic, he talked to survivors to get an accurate account. He found out there's a drummer boy who used his drum as a float and drew that in. He also acted out the various poses of sailors in distress, rather than drawing them from imagination. The result is a painting that tells its story convincingly. The same goes for many of his other paintings.

Another interesting read is the story of him trying to design a Dinotopian fire engine. When he presented his concept art to a professional fire engine designer, it was critiqued to have form but not function. There's lack of heat protection for the dinosaur, lack of understanding on how water hose works and a complicated water pump design. The revised concept is a huge improvement in believability that I thought it actually might work.

He has provided lots of photos and his own work in the book. You'll get to see how he stages the props for reference, sketches and drafts, plenty of commissioned work (especially from National Geographic), the bird on his shoulder while he's drawing, the lousy-art incinerator he created from mirrors and other entertaining stuff.

Imaginative Realism is an enlightening and fun read. Highly recommended to professionals, beginning art students and those who wish to push their art to the next level in terms of depth.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

I have been a long time reader of James Gurney's blog. My interest was not in sci-fi/fantasy, but rather, his insights into painting 'what's not there'. I have studied representational painting - the training is indispensable, but (obviously) focuses on painting a model or still life. The academies do not teach the lost art of painting realistic but imagined scenes - of course you can find classes about painting 'abstractedly' or from 'imagination' but not painting, say, an historic scene or creature that no human has ever seen alive (like a dinosaur) - and that's the gap filled in by this book.

The book offers a wide range of topics - from pleasant surprises like created imaginary maps that look 'real' to extensive coverage of the forgotten use of maquettes and dioramas.

What this book is not: Though this book is fun and interesting to read for non-artists, this is not an in depth 'how to' book on technique (though he does go over some techniques) - so before you set out to paint 'what's not there' you have to have the basic drawing and painting skills to be able to successfully execute the ideas in this book.

overall, its a great overview and practical guide creating paintings from your imagination that look 'real' but it's also just fun to read. Highly recommended.

An instant classic that really gets into the nuts and bolts of doing professional illustration work. It is a rarity among popular art instruction books that they have both basic information and very professional level information. But this book has both. Great explanations, clear prose, and lots and lots of great pictures demonstrating the principles under discussion. And of course there's lots of amazing fantasy artwork by the author which is all reproduced excellently. In that way its also a Monograph of Jim Gurney's work, as it also includes lots of his other illustration work, besides Dinotopia, including some fantasy paperback book covers and some incredible Historical Pieces done for National Geographic. All of which is deconstructed to show us his thought process while composing and designing his pictures, the building and setting up models, the use of silhouettes, chiaroscuro, and value control, using research to assist the imagination and increase creativity, and many other facets of his workflow. There's also a nice concise history of imaginative art that starts the book off, which includes the best reproductions of a Howard Pyle and Dean Cornwell picture I've seen. I purchased this book directly from the Dinotopia Store, so I got it signed by Mr. Gurney. Well worth it, learned a lot very quickly.

When I first opened up "Imaginative Realism," the first impression that I formed was that the book reminded me of some of the older texts from the 1970's. There was something about the style of the text and the page layout that made me think of an older text from a used bookstore; I almost felt like I was walking through a hobby store. Though it may sound it, this is not a bad thing - in an age of Photoshop and 3D rendering programs, James Gurney's approach reminds the reader of the traditional approach to illustration.

That being said, this is no novice guide. There is no "the body is made up of shapes" step-by-step guide, this is no "How to draw" book for beginners. James Gurney assumes that the reader has a moderate to high level of skill in most of the areas he addresses. What he does explain are the ideas behind how the real world can provide insight into the fantasy realm. Maquettes, models, architecture, and even workable fixative - this is a great all around book for hobbyists as well as professionals.

I decided to take my time reading James Gurney's book on Imaginative Realism. This is not a step by step how to book. This book is more of Gurney's thoughts and ideas on how he creates his masterpieces. He's sharing that kind of thought process with you. The setup of the book is rather nice, the introduction then the History of Art and what studies were done so that a student can achieve a believable and realistic looking piece. The book briefly goes into materials but don't expect Gurney to share what brand of oils you should use, or color palette. From there, he talks about creating the beginnings of your work - preliminary sketches. The rest of the chapters highlight various ideas on people, archaeology, creatures etc.. Near the end of the book you get ideas on composition, various studying techniques, and personal favorite chapters for me were the Procedure and Careers.

Procedures gave me a bit more insight on painting techniques such as use of impasto
Careers highlighted various careers and fields one would be in, some of the ones I have forgotten about were designers for theme parks as an example.

He includes a glossary of terms so if you get lost in artistic lingo - you got a spot to reference.

Overall I was satisfied with the book since many of the tools he used was demonstration of using live model/ photo reference in a proper manner. It was good to see how Gurney explains how to change things up and not eyeball the reference too much because reference is a tool and not a crutch. The other amazing part of this book was to see how much work Gurney put into making Marquettes (models) and miniatures to use as reference for his paintings. Sculpting is a good way for an artist to learn and understand how to make a 2d illustration come to life with proper lighting and form.

The only reason I didn't give this book a full five stars is that the captions to various pieces in the book were a bit confusing. It was hard to tell sometimes which was being referred to in his examples, and sometimes his captions weren't as specific. For example had an "above, right, bottom right" and there were four images. I suppose a small numbers system by the images being referenced to could help, or just better caption placement to avoid confusion. I don't want to over-blow the issue, as it wasn't really taking away the overall enjoyment of the book. However, it did it happen enough where it made reading a bit confusing.

Overall, beautiful work! If you're a James Gurney fan you'll definitely enjoy this. As an artist I enjoyed the examples that give me ideas and what kind of work I'm expected to do depending on the career - art job I am assigned to.

I don't think I'll be putting down the book for a while and will keep it nearby when I'm stuck for ideas.

I am an artist who primarily draws and paints what I see in front of me, but I have always been in awe of those artists who can make another world seem real, or who can dream up a fantastic creature and make it look believable.

James Gurney is one of those artists, and in this book he reveals the process behind making his dream-worlds become reality. Gurney is a superb, top-notch illustrator who can draw *anything*, and he gives really unique and unusual tips for making your work realistic. He doesn't go step-by-step through each illustration. Instead, he tells you how he came up with the ideas and how he dealt with the problems of light, shadows, anatomy, perspective, and textures. Many of his tips were really interesting and things that I never would have thought of. In his own works he relies heavily on the use of maquettes, or small sculptures to help him figure out the proper lighting.

The book is liberally illustrated with Gurney's amazing illustrations, it is really a beautiful book and worth the money for this alone. I also like the way it's organized into sections concerned with a particular subject or problem that might need to be worked through. Gurney obviously takes the time and effort needed to get his images right, and he tries to impart a little of that thinking into this book.

He does have a couple of step-by-step sections at the back of the book, and I do wish that he had explored those more fully. I would really love to see a very in-depth walk-through of one of his major illustrations, from the first sketches, through all the photo and other reference that he uses, including all preparatory drawings, underlayers of paint, etc. He just touches on it in this book but he could easily write an entire new book on one illustration alone.

Also, Gurney's reliance on maquettes works very well for him, and I understand what he's saying and agree with the philosophy of it, but the prospect of making a little sculpture in the detail that he does is pretty daunting to me. He makes these beautiful little architectural models that probably took him an hour, but would take me a week and it still wouldn't look right. I wish he had showed the scale of more of the maquettes, they look really big. He also talks about going to an archaeological site or other sites to gather reference material, which would be out of the question for most average people. And I wish he had given us more information and/or photos about his studio and the materials he uses, like what brushes he uses, more detail on how he sets up his photographic lighting, etc.

All in all, though, I found this book very inspiring, with lots of ideas for me to start exploring my own imaginary world, and with lots of gorgeous illustrations to pore over for years to come. I can't wait to go get some of his other books now so I can see more of his illustrations!

While this book will in no way help you draw or improve your existing drawing skills, it helps inspire creative thinking and develop your process as an artist. There are many great ideas to do this, ranging from from making clay and plaster models, using costumes, or setting up a workspace. The photos in the book are beautiful, even if they are not particularly useful most of the time, and the written elements are descriptive and help describe his process.
The principles on how to create more realistic work of fantasy art are helpful for the more practiced artist, so if you already have all the basic skills (and some of the advanced ones) and are interested in this genre of art, this is the book for you. If you are looking to Start, try something more basic. You won't find anatomy, step-by-step instructions, or templates of figures, expressions, body parts in action, etc. This is about process, setup, and inspiration.

Imaginative Realism explains techniques to help artists express their inner vision more realistically. This is a fantastic bag of tricks for anyone who has ever said, "Man I just wish I could get onto paper or canvas what I have in my head!"

The photos and illustrations are ample and in good taste, they supplement the text but do not distract from it. The binding is quite sound for a paper back and the print and photo quality are quite good. Worth the price, though I will say as much use as this book has ALREADY received in my studio I will be hard-binding myself and would suggest the same to anyone else.

Well folks James Gurney has given us this fantastic book to show us a myriad on methods. I am incredibly pleased with my purchase and without hesitation I can say if you are going to buy ONE art book this year...make it either this one or his other book Light and Color, also available on Amazon.

"Don't judge a book by it's cover" might be a cliche, but I find it quite relevant for this book. I own James Gurney's 2 books "Dinotopia" and have followed his blog and I can say that I am a fan of his work. However the cover on this book, to put it mildly, was not quite what I'd expect from him. Fortunately, thanks to my friend's persistence, I browsed this book at my local bookstore and was impressed by what I saw, so much so that I purchased a copy from Amazon. When I got the book, wow! I was even more impressed, it's one of the few art books that I have read with gusto from cover to cover.

James covers many topics and shows many illustrations to support the ideas. The balance of text and pictures was just right to keep me interested in reading the book. It's not a step by step book but more of conceptual reference book. He narrates the thought process behind the paintings and gives insightful advise on the topics covered.

I showed it to a friend of mine who is an accomplished illustrator in his own wright, and he was well impressed and inspired by this book. Highly recommended.

James Gurney might be described as the Norman Rockwell of Fantasy Artists...he's just that good. I have seen
his work displayed at Science Fiction conventions, and, believe you me, it's enough to make the average artist
toss a fortune in art supplies out the window. Although best known for DINOTOPIA and his many gorgeous paperback
covers, Gurney has also worked for the US Postal Service and the National Geographic Society. Therefore, it's
indeed generous of him to have produced this outstanding instructional book. Even veteran artists can learn a
thing or two from its contents, and fans can marvel at its many fascinating illustrations.

Herein are chapters devoted to the basic subjects of sketching, composition, figures, studio supplies, and
so on. But you also get valuable insight into archaeology, architecture, paleontology, vehicles and aliens.
Especially enlightening is the information on the use of maquettes (sculpted studies) as an aid in creating
convincing illustrations of creatures and building that don't actually exist. This is an excellent idea, and
I'll bet that many artists haven't even thought of it. There is a wealth of information in IMAGINATIVE REALISM
that should prove useful to artists of many different persuasions, and its cover price of $24.99 is chump
change considering the real value offered.

Major Debit: it's a softcover book, and will not stand up to constant reference. So, you could buy one as a
reference book, and one as an art book- and a mighty fine one, at that. Thank you, James Gurney!