Illustrators Quotes

Photojournalist? With a few exceptions, those of us working as photojournalists might now more appropriately call ourselves illustrators. For, unlike real reporters, whose job it is to document what's going down, most of us go out in the world expecting to give form to the magazine, or to newspaper editor's ideas, using what's become over the years a pretty standardized visual language. So we search for what is instantly recognizable, supportive of the text, easiest to digest, or most marketable - more mundane realities be damned. ~ Eugene Richards

I remember my mom had a big collection of copies of Saturday Evening Post magazines, and that was really my introduction to those great illustrators. ~ Thomas Kincade

Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose. ~ Edward R. Tufte

My purpose is to create a mirror for the reader to see themselves, to create a light for people to see themselves in the characters, pictures, and stories. So they resonate. ~ Kadir Nelson

I don't relax. My main relaxation is meeting illustrators and publishers in restaurants and bars. ~ Tony Ross

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time - very inspiring and dramatic. ~ Bat For Lashes

Before the motorcar replaced the horse, and for some years after there were many illustrators who drew horses with the same authority with which they drew the human figure; now there are very few who can do that. Most modern illustraters fudge a horse the best they can and hope to get on by the technique. ~ Russell Hoban

That innovator is the aforementioned Hugh Thomson, who might be called the Colin Firth of Austen-inspired book illustration." (P. 52) ~ Devoney Looser

That's something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for. ~ Eric Carle

I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators - Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists - Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion. In Botticelli's paintings, every pebble and every leaf is rendered with a religious devotion; there is reverence inherent in paying such close attention to every stone, turning painting itself into a form of worship, an act of prayer. ~ Alan Lee (artist)

A lot of illustrators have one central character and then they develop it, and all their books are based around it. But that was not my wish. I wanted to introduce children to the whole creative side of many aspects of life. ~ Brian Wildsmith

Speechless and very nearly panting, she fell back against the wall with a thump, knowing that if she lived to be ninety, she would still carry the searing mark of that kiss on her soul.
"At last," he murmured. "A way to shut you up." Christovao Santos (Chris), Sanctuary ~ Sharon K. Garner

I love being an illustrator because I get to read really great stories, work with amazing people, travel and see places I never would've seen. And I get to draw all the time. ~ Brian Selznick

When I was little I used to wish I could talk to the illustrators because I wanted to discuss something about the books. With so many of the other art forms that children experience, such as movies and television, they don't get to control the pace. ~ Jan Brett

Before that I wanted to be a magazine illustrator - I probably would have painted Gothic scenes. ~ Ira Levin

My real background was in art studies. At the beginning I was a painter, then I was this graphic designer, then I became an illustrator, then I was a comic artist. But for me it's a different way of expression, a different field of art. They're not separated; everything for me is related. ~ Marjane Satrapi

To my mind, the most successful and the best comic book illustrators are those who translate the real world into a consistent code. If you look at Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, their drawings look nothing like the real world, but they are internally consistent. In terms of a comic book it can work just fine. ~ Dave Gibbons

Art is for the elite because it has a very high price-point of entry. And when one is in that social strata, they look down at illustrators because they just draw things directly for a few hundred dollars, and that's seen as being a bit grubby. Galleries allow artists to stay relatively divorced from the financial aspects of their trade. ~ Molly Crabapple

'War and Peas' by Michael Foreman, one of the great British children's illustrators. His watercolours are so lovely you could almost eat them, just as members of the target audience have been trying to do for decades. ~ Tobias Hill

I used to sit in the studio with a copy of the (Saturday Evening) Post laid across my knees ... And then I'd conjure up a picture of myself as a famous illustrator and gloat over it, putting myself in various happy situations, surrounded by admiring females, deferred to by office flunkies at the magazines, wined and dined by the editor ... ~ Norman Rockwell

The only people left in America who seem not to be artists are illustrators. ~ Brad Holland

In England, there is a dividing line between artists and illustrators, who are thought inferior to painters. Well, that's absolute rubbish. Some of the most creative work is being done in children's books. In Japan, everything is art. They don't say painting is better than ceramics or dress design. ~ Brian Wildsmith

A library is where ideas sleep between covers, waiting for you to discover them. ~ Lois Ehlert

Illustrators are word people who happen to draw. We work with one foot in a book, the other stuck in a paint pot. Our shoes are a disgrace. ~ Wallace Tripp

Not very many people can draw who are illustrators today. ~ John Kricfalusi

We've lost these qualities, these abilities to do something by hand. Some illustrators have it still, but it's just not art. We have photography. We have cameras and computers that do it better and faster. ~ Gerhard Richter

I am the first to point out that I really am not kind to illustrators. By that, I mean I really don't give that much to work with. ~ James A. Moore

A lot of excellent illustrators are working at the moment
especially in fantasy and children's books. It is exciting also to see graphic artists such as Dave McKean, in his film Mirrormask, moving between different media. I also greatly admire the more traditional work of Gennady Spirin and Roberto Innocenti. Kinuko Craft, John Jude Palencar, John Howe, Charles Vess, Brian Froud ... I'll stop there, as the list would get too long. But
in a fit of pride and justified nepotism
I'll add my daughter, Virginia Lee, to the list. Her first illustrated children's book, The Frog Bride [coming out in the U.K. in September, 2007], will be lovely. ~ Alan Lee

I love Inuit art, and most anything you would find in a folk art museum, as well as children's art or children's book illustrators or illustrators in general - all the kinds of work that my paintings would draw comparisons to. ~ Neil Farber

Please. Put the gun down and we'll talk. A beautiful woman holding a small cannon plays hell with my concentration. Christovao (Chris) Santos, Sanctuary ~ Sharon K. Garner

Andy [Warhol] was on the scene, but he wasn't an artist at first; he was more an illustrator. He was always surrounded by about ten people who worshipped him. He'd go to a party and they would all come along. But he was drawing shoes and that sort of thing. ~ Claes Oldenburg

In my youth I dreamed of being an illustrator. ~ Terence Stamp

Cartoonists are untrained artists, while illustrators are more trained. ~ John Kricfalusi

Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people. ~ Shepard Fairey

I have friends and illustrators who can't stand drawing on the Cintiq. [A graphic pad tablet used by digital animators] There's a certain tension and friction when you draw on paper that they miss. The tablet is very slick. It's like drawing on glass. But that didn't bother me at all. ~ Don Hertzfeldt

I love writing picture books and story books because of the exciting, visual life that artists and illustrators give to them. And most of all, I love writing novels because of the inner, emotional journeys that they take me on. Hopefully, the reader comes with me! ~ Berlie Doherty

N MY early boyhood I was enraptured by the great fairytale illustrators of the period: Arthur Rackham, Edmond Dulac, Kay Nielsen. As a schoolboy, I was to discover Aubrey Beardsley, and I was extremely fond of an edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream with most imaginative drawings by Heath Robinson, ~ John Gielgud

Try to remember that being unsuccessful in school doesn't automatically mean you'll be unsuccessful in life. Lots of people who didn't excel in school still went on to have successful lives. ~ Dav Pilkey

I actually started out as a writer and then converted to illustration because I realised that there was a dearth of good illustrators in genre fiction, at least in Australia at that time. ~ Shaun Tan

Twelve years ago I left Boston and New York, and moved east and west at the same time. East, to a little village in Devon, England, a town I've been familiar with for years, since my friends Brian and Wendy Froud and Alan Lee all live there. It had long been my dream to live in England, so I finally bought a little old cottage over there. But I decided, both for visa and health reasons, living there half the year would be better than trying to cope with cold, wet Dartmoor winters. At that point, Beth Meacham had moved out to Arizona, and I discovered how wonderful the Southwest is, particularly in the wintertime. Now I spend every winter-spring in Tucson and every summer-autumn in England. Both places strongly affect my writing and my painting. They're very opposite landscapes, and each has a very different mythic history. In Tucson, the population is a mix of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Euro-Americans of various immigrant backgrounds - so the folklore of the place is a mix of all those things, as well as the music and the architecture. The desert has its own colors, light, and rhythms. In Devon, by contrast, it's all Celtic and green and leafy, and the color palette of the place comes straight out of old English paintings - which is more familiar to me, growing up loving the Pre-Raphaelites and England's 'Golden Age' illustrators. I've learned to love an entirely different palette in Arizona, where the starkness of the desert is offset by the brilliance of t ~ Terri Windling

Speaking of line, what artist of line was ever able to find more depth and volume than Hirschfeld? He was an illustrator and a caricaturist, but first and foremost, an artist. ~ Billy Cannon

For a while, I just thought that I wanted to be an illustrator because that's all I wanted to do. I also did some sculpting. It was always very artsy and very feminine, everything that I did. ~ Jason Wu

I would like to champion diverse forms like graphic novels and works told in verse and diverse writers and illustrators and diverse authors as well. ~ Malorie Blackman

I've always been drawn to artists who paint for the everyday person. I love the American illustrators. ~ Thomas Kinkade

Nowadays, people are so jeezled up. If they took some chamomile tea and spent more time rocking on the porch in the evening listening to the liquid song of the hermit thrush, they might enjoy life more. ~ Tasha Tudor

Illustrators are usually illustrating something big or commercial if not outright advertising. It's a form of prostitution, but that's cool because we don't have any moral hang-up about it. ~ Eric Drooker

Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story. ~ Philip Reeve

I've had so many influences and sources of inspiration as an illustrator that it is impossible to name just one. I loved Aubrey Beardsley when I was a student, and then Edmund Dulac and other Golden Age illustrators made a big impact, as well as Victorian painters like Richard Dadd and Edward Burne-Jones. My long-term heroes though are Albretch Durer, Brueghel, Hieronymous Bosch, Jan Van Eyck, Leonardo, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Turner and Degas. What most of them have in common is brilliant draughtsmanship and a strong linear or graphic quality. Most are also printmakers. The one I keep going back to and who fascinates me the most is JMW Turner, the greatest watercolourist. ~ Alan Lee

After that I jumped, especially being in art school, to the illustrators. ~ Bill Sienkiewicz