John Gurney has illustrated over 100 books for children, mostly series chapter books (notably The Bailey School Kids and The A to Z Mysteries). He has written and illustrated one book to date, Dinosaur Train, published by Harper Collins in 2002. Although he has only one book published as an author, he pursues writing quite vigorously. He has been a member of a writers group for at least six years, and has many stories circulating that keep getting glowing rejections.

John's favorite subject (also the one he think's he's best at) is anthropomorphic animals. The stories he writes generally deal with animal characters he would like to illustrate in settings he would enjoy diving into, like baseball, superheroes, westerns, and pirates--all things he rarely gets to do this in his series books. For these book John tries to create a subtly caricatured Norman Rockwell look. He enjoys envisioning the characters and bringing them to life, and having friends and neighbors pose for him.

John generally work in oils, but occasionally gets to do some cartoonier watercolor pieces. He enjoys a variety of assignments, like puzzles, books, advertisements, and book covers, but as he reaches the "middle years " of his career would love to get to the point where he's just illustrating my own stories.

You can see and learn more of John's work at http://johnstevengurney.com/

Click on the images below for larger versions of artwork.

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