I'm a 46-year-old paleoartist from Holly Springs, North Carolina.

My earliest memories of prehistoric animals were a series in Life magazine featuring the art of Rudolf Zallinger and seeing the original " King Kong" movie. These two events coincided with my first attempts to draw, at the tender age of 4 years old.

Not long afterwards I learned to read, and began to acquire all manner of books, comics, etc. that had dinosaurs or other prehistoric animals in them. My first big influences were Zallinger, Burian, Knight and the Marx Dinosaur playset.

All through my childhood, I was the "Dinosaur Kid". I never did any really serious paleoart until around 1989. I had acquired a degree in commercial art and advertising design, and my artwork was more towards portraits, aircraft and the occasional sign or cartoon. In the mid-eighties I picked-up David Norman's "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs" and was fascinated by the artwork of John Sibbick. Then Greg Paul did the "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World". I was re-captivated by these long dead beasts, and decided to do some serious artwork on the subject. I started with detailed pencil and pen and ink illustrations.

As I developed my technique
I moved into color illustrations, finally utilizing a computer to finish my work. I'm still somewhat of a traditionalist, using pencil, pen and ink to do my illustrations, and I use my computer as a very expensive airbrush!

My work has been displayed at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center and prehistoric Times magazine.

Aside from paleoart and paleontology, I'm a single Dad with a great (and aspiring artist) ten year old son. I also collect and study paleo-American stone tools, build World War Two armor models and work as an AutoCAD operator/Drafter.

Truett Garner, 1998  link