Sunday, September 25, 2016

Guest Post with Juan Carlos Alonso


Photo Content from Juan Carlos Alonso

I am a graphic designer, creative director and illustrator living in Miami, Florida. Way back in 1992, I founded Alonso & Company, a creative boutique specializing in branding, design and advertising. I have been fortunate enough to work with clients of all sizes from Fortune 500 to local and have forged strong relationships with companies including the NBA franchise The Miami Heat, Bacardi Rum, Ryder System, Pitney Bowes and Capitol Records, to name a few.

I have always had a passion for nature. It has taken me around the world from Australia to the Galapagos Islands where I have been able to experience wildlife first hand.




DEFINING MOMENT DURING YOUR YOUTH WHEN YOU REALIZED YOU WANTED TO BE WRITER.

For me, passion for books, and more precisely illustration, has always been with me. There was no exact defining moment where I can say “I want to be a writer,” I just feel everything has led up to me becoming one.

I recently read somewhere that your passion at 10 years old is probably your true passion in life. Well, it couldn’t be more true in my case. As a child, I was obsessed with dinosaurs, animals and nature. I read every book I could get my hands on and when I visited the library, I knew exactly where the sections were and that’s where you would find me. Any and all of my free time was spent drawing dinosaurs and animals. In doing so, it brought me closer to understanding them and getting to know the nuances between species. Nothing made me happier than a pencil, a paper and a book. Later my interests grew beyond simply drawing and I began to focus on a career in art. I studied fine art and ultimately began a career in graphic design, never fully leaving my passion for the printed page.

Fast forward many years later and here I am going back and writing, researching and illustrating the very topic I was preoccupied with in my youth. Truth be told, dinosaurs are a universally fascinating subject for millions of children and adults alike and have cemented themselves as part of popular culture. They are a never ending enigma, both impossible yet very real. Ancient animals more fantastical in scale and ferocity than anything we could easily grasp and our desire to understand them never fully satisfied. When I set out to write the Ancient Earth Journal series I wanted to approach it from a first person account of what it was like to stand beside a dinosaur by painting the picture both literally and narratively. Bringing back my childhood excitement in a way I would have enjoyed as the 10-year-old version of myself and perhaps bring him closer to satisfying his need to understand the prehistoric world. 



Through detailed illustrations and descriptive narrative, readers will experience a thrilling, thoroughly enjoyable ride through the most popular time period of prehistory.

What would it be like to see a living, breathing dinosaur? Following in the footsteps of Ancient Earth Journal: The Early Cretaceous, this next installment, The Late Jurassic, will take readers further back in time to a period when giants ruled the land and early mammals began to secure their place alongside the dinosaurs. The Late Jurassic period was home to many species of our favorite dinosaurs, such as Apatosaurus (or Brontosaurus), Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus, to name a few. The Late Jurassic includes the latest paleontological findings to build an accurate depiction of the dinosaurs, environment, and wildlife of the period. Due to the abundance of fossils available for both plants and animals of this period, the book paints a vivid, realistic picture of the flora and fauna of the time, with more emphasis on hunting and defensive tactics, as well as early mammals and their role in the planet's evolution, for a thrilling, thoroughly enjoyable ride through the most popular time period of prehistory. Written and illustrated in the style of a naturalist's notebook, the reader is given a first-hand account of what it would be like to stand alongside some of the largest creatures to ever walk the earth.


You can purchase Ancient Earth Journal: The Late Jurassic at the following Retailers:


And now, The Giveaways.
Thank you JUAN CARLOS ALONSO for making this giveaway possible.
3 Winners will receive a Copy of Ancient Earth Journal: 
The Late Jurassic: Notes, drawings, and observations from prehistory by Juan Carlos Alonso.
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4 comments:

  1. When I was a kid I wanted to be a famous singer. Not a rock star but more like a crooner or a balladeer. Didn't have the talent for it however. *sigh*

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  2. I wanted to live in the library. Still do.

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