Friday, July 30, 2010

Donkey Portrait

Peanut the donkey posed for me last evening after her munch of hay and her roll in the dust.

But the other donkey, Jezebel, wanted some attention too. She walked over and rested her heavy head on top of my sketchbook, wanting to be scratched on the top of her neck.

8 comments:

The fearless threader said...

You live in heaven. Love your donkeys.

Moai said...

Very nice portrait! I love donkeys, so I'm jealous of your opportunity to spend some quality time sketching them.
By the way, I heard that you're going to do some teaching for TAD.org? I'm a student (or TADpole, as we say) there, so hearing that news made me very excited!

Tyler J said...

I think James makes his own heaven and thankfully shares it with us. Heaven is what you make it, if you'll pardon the sanctimoniousness (if that's a word). Can't we all find our perfect world in the imperfect world in which we find ourselves? (I sure am full of it tonight, eh?)

I have a technical question for you. I am guessing that you lay in your pencil sketch first then add water color (or markers, or whatever). Do you touch up the image with a pencil afterward? It seems that your pencil lines remain remarkably clean with the color laid in.

Thanks again for sharing.

Andrés Carrandi said...

Sorry for posting something completely off-topic, but I thought I definitely should share with you. I saw this note and trailer today: http://movies.ign.com/articles/110/1109514p1.html, which together with the upcoming Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness, the two reported 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea adaptations on the works, and what seems like an inevitable Dinosaur resurgence towards 2013, the 20th anniversary of Jurassic Park (which is slowly starting to take shape), a right time to get a Dinotopia feature film might just be drawing near. I certainly don't know the details of the existing project not having happened, but I didn't want to keep this to myself in case it had to do with timing and studio reluctance. Victorian and dinosaur films might happily converge in cinemas soon enough!

All the best!

Harriet said...

Beautiful donkey painting, so cute.

James Gurney said...

Thanks, everyone.
Moai: Yes, I'll be doing a TAD presentation this fall, and we'll announce it soon.

Tyler: I do a quick pencil layin, then scrub some water-soluble colored pencil (black and brown), hit it with water, then come in with the pencils again over the dry surface.

Andres: There has been interest in Dinotopia from feature film producers lately, but only the early stages of discussion.

Andrés Carrandi said...

That's great to hear! In that case, may everything get sorted out sooner rather than later! Thanks for answering.

Me said...

Stumbled here. It's lovely.