Illustrator Quotes

As an illustrator you need to understand the human body – but having looked at and understood nature, you must develop an ability to look away and capture the balance between what you’ve seen and what you imagine.

As the years went by I became a writer and illustrator, although exclusively of fantasies.

I write plays and movies, I live and work at the borderline between word and image just as any cartoonist or illustrator does. I’m not a pure writer. I use words as the score for kinetic imagistic representations.

Before that I wanted to be a magazine illustrator – I probably would have painted Gothic scenes.

I get asked a lot if I’d want to get into live-action movies, and the answer, honestly, is ‘no.’ I’m an illustrator, and I think animation is an extension of that way of expressing myself. That’s not to say I’d never make a live-action movie, but I don’t strive for it.

Balancing an illustrator and author can be tricky, but I was an illustrator mostly before I wrote my books.

For me, the perfect film has no dialogue at all. It’s purely a visual, emotional, visceral kind of experience. And I think one can create wonderful depth and meaning and communication without using words. I started out as an illustrator and a cartoonist and caricature artist, so for me the visual is primary.

I’m not a painter by any stretch of the imagination; I’m a dyed-in-the-wool traditional illustrator, and I begin with black and white. If I need colour, I add it over the top. There’s a calligraphic element to it… it’s about the texture of lines on the page.

I’m sometimes a cartoonist, and there’s an audience for that, and I’m sometimes an illustrator, and there’s an audience for that.

Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I’ve always called myself an illustrator. I’m not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.

I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.

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.

I don’t think there’s an illustrator who’s as good as a Titian or a Rembrandt… but then, Rembrandt was a bit of an illustrator on the quiet, you know?

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.

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.

I love Maira Kalman. She’s an amazing illustrator and writer. I’ve loved her since I was in college, but when I moved to New York and experienced the same city she was drawing and writing about, I developed a whole new appreciation. Her work made me observe everything so much deeper and more joyfully.

My father spent his entire early career as an illustrator for comic books: EC Comics like ‘Tales from the Crypt’ and ‘Creepshow,’ then moving on to such magazines as ‘Mad’ and ‘Weird Science.’

Usually, an author writes a manuscript that is handed in to the editor. The editor will then work with an art director to find just the right illustrator for the job, and off they go. Many times, the illustrator and author never meet.

I grew up wanting only to be an illustrator. I studied art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College.

I was a magazine illustrator for many years before I became an actor, and I used to think, ‘Oh, God, all those wasted years!’ But now I think it’s just been one big enterprise of illustrating. I used to do it with colored pencils, and now I do it with this voice and this set of limbs.

My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn’t want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.

Information and inspiration are everywhere… history, art, architecture, everything an illustrator needs. Europe is, after all, the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture.

I love illustrating for other writers because I am given stories I never would have thought of, and my work as an illustrator is always in support of the story.

The writing process isn’t something I’m in love with. I’m an illustrator who writes.

I’m sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of five, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book.

I had started out my grown-up life in New York City, but I couldn’t figure out how to be an actor there. And so I had been a magazine illustrator instead.

The reason I love comics and have collected them for 37 years is because I always wanted to be an illustrator and a writer – and comics are really the perfect blend of those two mediums.

I’m an illustrator. I have to accept my role.

I’ve just written a very gritty, non-magical take on the King Arthur legend, ‘Here Lies Arthur,’ and I’m currently toying with some other historical ideas, as well as working with the illustrator David Wyatt on some sequels to my Victorian space opera ‘Larklight.’

I grew up under the spell of London. Illustrator Kerry Lee’s evocative 1950 wall map of the city hung above our breakfast table at home in Canada. Over my corn flakes, I traced the capital’s high roads and medieval alleys.

Roald Dahl worked with other illustrators, but it was only when he teamed up with Quentin Blake that the chemistry began to fizz. Quentin Blake is Britain’s greatest living illustrator and has that special talent all the great illustrators have, of unobtrusive brilliance.

I majored in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, although I never had any intention of being an illustrator and didn’t take any classes in illustration there. It was just that the illustration degree had no requirements.

As an undergraduate I held many small jobs as an illustrator.

I wrote ‘And Two Boys Booed’ several years ago, but we really chased around looking for the perfect illustrator, so it took a while.

I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.

I don’t think of myself as an illustrator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I write the story with pictures – I don’t illustrate the story with the pictures.

When you start writing a picture book, you have to write a manuscript that has enough language to prompt the illustrator to get his or her gears running, but then you end up having to cut it out because you don’t want any of the language to be redundant to the pictures that are being drawn.

The great children’s author and illustrator Shirley Hughes marks her 90th birthday by appearing as Michael Berkeley’s guest in ‘Private Passions’.

I’m a classically trained painter, and I was an illustrator in New York working with Fortune 500s companies as well as the NBA and the Olympics. I first got into sculpting when I created a sculpture based on a painting I had done for the 1984 Olympics.

You don’t put your head above the parapet and become a personality if you’re an illustrator – it’s not part of it; it’s not possible. You are a servant to the story.

And I had worked at the comic-book store almost by accident, because I was deciding to make a living as an artist, be it as an art tutor or illustrator, and that’s how I wanted to make my living.

My mom was a biological illustrator for a time before computers replaced that job.