Artist James Gurney shows his dinosaur painting process

My friend, James Gurney (creator of the stunning Dinotopia series of books), is one heck of an illustrator. In this video, he goes through his process of painting a dinosaur scene.

A couple of months ago, Scientific American magazine asked me to illustrate a feature for the upcoming March issue about an amazing discovery: a group of small dinosaurs who died together, trapped in mud.

When I delivered the oil painting of the scene, I also produced a short video showing how I did the painting.

Yesterday Scientific American put the video up on their official website, along with a blog post describing my "wonderfully analog process"–you know, pencil, clay, glue, and paint.

If it wasn't below freezing outside, I would have been out in the pond muck wallowing around to see what it feels like to die in quicksand.

James Gurney's Mud Trap painting