One of my favorite illustrators

Growing up, I was not the typical girl who loved playing with Barbies and dolls and makeup. Instead, I liked dinosaurs.

Needless to say, I have always loved James Gurney's Dinotopia. At first, I was into it just because living with dinosaurs was my ultimate childhood fantasy. Now, I appreciate it for the art (and still a little bit for the dinosaurs!)

These paintings are way more intricate and detailed than any story board we would ever have to do, but I think you can still learn a lot from looking at them.
Each of these paintings tells a story...even though they are published in books with words, the words really aren't that necessary. This is a major challenge for us as designers...communicating our ideas without words.

This painting does an excellent job of showing movement with the blurred background.

This illustration is interesting because it shows the detail that went into creating Dinotopia: Gurney goes into all sorts of vehicles and devices used in the land of Dinotopia, making it feel real. Just like IDers dabble in illustration, illustrators dabble in ID!

Last but not least, here is a link to a slideshow of Gurney's painting process, which I found very interesting. As you can see, it all starts witha sketch!

http://www.dinotopia.com/market_square/index.html

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go draw dinosaurs....I mean, uh, computers?