GNSI

Here’s some photos from the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators Annual Conference in Santa Cruz. It was great! It’s the first art conference I’d ever been to. Some highlights:

portfolio sharing of illustrators on the opening night, then opening keynote by Jack Laws who shared his approach to nature observation and inquiry while outdoors with his sketch book. Jane Kim told us about her gutsy Kickstarter to create art California Highway 395 (Migrating Murals) to call attention the plight of big horn sheep in the areas in which their migration was endangered, Breck Tyler who shared some wonderful discoveries about albatrosses in the Midway Atoll, techniques presentations where artists shared their Reid Psaltis, Jennifer Bates, and Linda Feltner shared technical details of their art, a communal mural of animals in the Monteray Bay area, and finally talks by Terryl Whitlatch (Star Wars, Brother Bear, many more) and even John Fleskes of Spectrum Fantastic Art who shared how he started spectrum many years go. Terryl’s talk was interesting because described how she used her understanding of animal anatomy to make imaginary creatures believable. I also was able to do a workshop with her where she showed how she designed a hippogriff. During her plenary talk, she shared a lot of backstories, including how she design Sebulba to be a an anti-Jar Jar based on the skeleton of a camel. The moose pictures are designs she created to imagine how a moose might move when it talked.

It was a great conference to hear from people at all stages of their career and working in very different ways.