People like James Gurney

James Gurney (born June 14, 1958) is an artist and author best known for his illustrated book series Dinotopia, which is presented in the form of a 19th-century explorer’s journal from an island utopia cohabited by humans and dinosaurs. He lives in Rhinebeck, New York, in the Hudson Valley of New York State. Gurney is also a confirmed paleoartist who depicts and restores in his paintings extinct fauna such as both avian and non-avian dinosaurs.

Gurney grew up in Palo Alto, California, the youngest of five children of Joanna and Robert Gurney, a mechanical engineer. Encouraged 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.