Best Illustrators Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Often children's book illustrators were assumed to have kind and whimsical natures--a foolish expectation, for all the best children's literature, if anyone has been paying attention, hinges on betrayal, the heartlessness of nature, death.”

Children Death Nature Betrayal Children S Books Kids Books Illustrators Kid Lit Children S Book Illustrators

Book:I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

Source: I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

“In my opinion, writers and illustrators are both deep thinkers. While writers use words and sentences to tell a story, illustrators nowadays use their talent and art to say the same story with their drawings and illustrations. Both skills, writing, and drawing need much intellect, patience, determination, hard work, persistence, and practice.”

Art Practice Hard Work Skills Drawing Writers Writing Process Illustrators Illustrating Writing Skill

Author:Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi

“Learning to read the imagery as well as the words highlights the importance of the reader in being an active part of producing the text and making each picture book their own adventure in interpretation."”

Picture Books Children S Literature Illustrators

Author:Laura Cain Gray

“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.”

People Stories Love Is Draws Really Great Amazing People Illustrators

Author:Brian Selznick

“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.”

Thinking Writing Stories Cartoonist Illustrators

Author:Chris Ware

“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.”

School Class Design Degrees Intention Islands Requirements Illustration Illustrators Rhode Island

Author:Brian Selznick

“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.”

People Knows Giving Trying Kind Has Beens Art Enough Artist Differences Fine Type Profession Not Sure Call Me Fine Arts Illustrators Fine Artists Best Art

Book:Norman Rockwell: Mini Masterpieces

Source: Norman Rockwell: Mini Masterpieces

“A library is where ideas sleep between covers, waiting for you to discover them.”

Book Ideas Waiting Sleep Discovery Library Reading Books Waiting For You Illustrators

Author:Lois Ehlert

“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.”

Firsts Able Artist Lines Depth Volume Illustrators

Author:Billy Cannon

“When I illustrate a cover or a book, I draw upon what the author tells me; that's how I see my responsibility as an illustrator. J.K. Rowling is very descriptive in her writing — she gives an illustrator a lot to work with. Each story is packed full of rich visual descriptions of the atmosphere, the mood, the setting, and all the different creatures and people. She makes it easy for me. The images just develop as I sketch and retrace until it feels right and matches her vision.”

People Giving Feels Writing Book Different Stories Easy Responsibility Vision Rich Creatures Draws Mood Setting Settings Atmosphere Visuals Description Feels Right Illustrators

Author:Mary GrandPre

“An illustrator in my own mind - and this is not a truth of any kind - is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that's what you hold on to, and that's what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there.”

Thinking Writing Mind Believe Kind Book Whole Stories Fall Next Wish My Own Written Unique Add Falling In Love Closest Illustrators Illustrating

Author:Maurice Sendak

“Fortunately, I'm able to make a living from comics, so I'm privileged enough to be quite choosy, though most cartoonists can't afford to be. It's really an uncomfortable situation, since I'm not an illustrator, though I do get calls from morally indefensible businesses offering me money to decorate their ambitions. It's extremely rare, almost unheard of, in fact, that I am asked to do a comic strip. Do writers get calls to pen Toyota advertisements? Do composers get asked to write chamber pieces about exercise machines?”

“Illustrations have as much to say as the text. The trick is to say the same thing, but in a different way. It's no good being an illustrator who is saying a lot that is on his or her mind, if it has nothing to do with the text. . . the artist must override the story, but he must also override his own ego for the sake of the story.”

Ifs Way Mind Different Stories Artist Ego Sake Tricks Different Ways Illustration Illustrators

Author:Maurice Sendak

“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.”

Stories Given Support Illustrators Illustrating

Author:Brian Selznick

“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.”

Children Book Stories Imagination Elements Happenings Add Details Tiny Clue Picture Books Illustrators Gleaning

Author:Philip Reeve

“I don't relax. My main relaxation is meeting illustrators and publishers in restaurants and bars.”

Meetings Bars Restaurants Relax Publishers Relaxation Illustrators

Author:Tony Ross

“I wound up studying art and design, got a job at Lonely Planet Publications as a designer, cartographer and illustrator.”

Art Jobs Study Design Planets Lonely Wounds Designer Publication Illustrators Studying Art

Author:Trudi Canavan

“There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period.”

Source: Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell

“I love the process of cutting everything out with a scalpel yourself: I don't want to have my stencils drawn up in Illustrator, then laser-cut. I like the fact that it's slightly wrong; I think it gives it a beauty. The individual and handmade will always be worth more than what a computer can do, at least until computers can learn how to make mistakes.”

Thinking Want Giving Facts Individual Process Can Do Mistake Cutting Computer Making Mistakes Lasers Illustrators Scalpels Handmade

Author:Ben Eine

“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.”

Wells Kind Children Art Book Painting Draws Folks Comparison Museums Children's Books Illustrators Inuit Folk Art

Author:Neil Farber

“I knew that I wanted to be an illustrator since I was in kindergarten. I can remember the exact day. The art teacher usually came to our classroom once a week, but she was absent that day. Instead, our regular teacher gave us each a huge piece of paper and crayons, and we could do whatever we wanted.”

Art I Can Wanted Remember Teacher Pieces Week Huge Paper Classroom Absent Kindergarten Crayon Illustrators Art Teacher

Author:Jan Brett

“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.”

Children Littles Art Book Wanted Form Used Wish Television Pace Illustrators

Author:Jan Brett

“I think the two jobs I dreamed of doing as a teenager were comic book artist and record cover illustrator. Maybe film director was in the mix as well, but that seemed to be an impossible mountain to climb.”

Thinking Wells Two Book Jobs Film Artist Records Impossible Directors Mountain Comic Teenager Climbs Comic Book Film Directors Illustrators Two Jobs

Author:Dave McKean

“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.”

Used Certain Missing Paper Draws Glasses Drawing Bother Tension Digital Graphic Pads Friction Tablets Slick Animator Illustrators

Author:Don Hertzfeldt

“The illustrator is essentially a reporter: his subjects come from the outside, lit by a flash. A subject comes to the classical artist from inside, and when he discovers confirmation of it in the outside world he feels that it has been there all the time.”

World Feels Has Beens Artist Subjects Flash Reporters Lit Outside World Confirmation Illustrators

Book:The romantic rebellion: romantic versus classic art

Source: The romantic rebellion: romantic versus classic art

“The illustrators work so much harder on the books than the writers do. I mean, that's so much work doing what they do, and it's terrible for them.”

Mean Book Terrible Harder Illustrators

Author:Michael Ian Black

“I am an author-illustrator of children's books - and yet - I must confess I don't do the books for the kids. When I'm working on a book I'm somewhere else - at the circus - or a rustic old farm - or deep in a forest - with no thought of who might read the book or what age group it would appeal to. I write them so I can illustrate them.”

Writing Children I Can Book Might Kids Age Groups Forests Appeals Farms Somewhere Else Circus Children's Books Illustrators Rustic

Author:Bill Peet

“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.”

Used Situation Office Female Various Studios Magazines Evening Posts Knees Over It Copies Editors Saturday Admiring Illustrators Pictures Of Myself Saturday Evening

Author:Norman Rockwell

“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.”

Wanted Feminine Illustrators Sculpting

Author:Jason Wu

“Norman Rockwell spent his career painting pictures that helped people understand their own feelings...pictures that enriched their own experiences and celebrated their own lives. But the art establishment branded him an 'illustrator', a sentimental one at that. Real artists, they said were doing art for art's sake, not for the sake of the bourgeois public. Real artists were putting swiggles, smears or daubs of paint on the canvas. They were doing 'innovative' and 'creative' work. If they were hideous and grotesque; we know that's what life really is!”

“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.”

People Firsts Artist Party Scene Ten Shoes Drawing Warhol Illustrators

Author:Claes Oldenburg

“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.”

“I begin with understanding the intentions of the story. That helps me to zero in. Then I gather research for each individual character and analyze the time period with comparisons to the figure and the facial structure. It helps to be comfortable with computers because the massive amount of research is kept electronically and shared with my staff this way. Very little is printed out. I work with an illustrator to come up with the proper silhouettes and details of the clothing from the time period to time period. And on and on.”

“I used to draw and illustrate, but I don't do that anymore because I just like to write. I like to leave the illustrations to actual professional illustrators.”

Writing Used Draws Illustration Illustrators

Author:Meg Cabot

“It's really thrilling to work with an illustrator - your vision expands with the addition of someone else's artwork/artistic vision.”

Vision Artistic Thrilling Artwork Illustrators Artistic Vision

Author:Matthea Harvey

“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.”

Ifs Bigs Form Moral Advertising Prostitution Hang Ups Illustrators Illustrating

Author:Eric Drooker

“Just in terms of being able to be a professional artist, but also it's nice to not have to dread introductions. "What you do for a living?" It used to be easier just to tell people that I was a magazine illustrator than try to explain that I did comics, but not the kind of comics that they were used to, and no, it's not pornography, etc. And now people even of our parents' generation are familiar with the term "graphic novel," which is kind of amazing.”

People Trying Kind Able Used Artist Parent Term Novel Nice Generations Easier Familiar Used To Be Magazines Etc Dread Pornography Introduction Graphic Graphic Novels Illustrators

Author:Adrian Tomine

“I had a job as an illustrator, and I wanted to change the direction of my work. I moved to the country, and immediately I started to paint fairies and trolls.”

Country Wanted Jobs Moved Paint Fairy Troll Illustrators

Author:Brian Froud

“I wasn't a very good illustrator so I became a designer.”

Very Good Designer Illustrators

Author:Paula Scher

“I wanted to do comic books... as a comic book artist, as an illustrator. But I'm not very good so I thought I should do something else! So I went to a film school when I was seventeen and came out when I was nineteen.”

Should Book Wanted School Film Artist Very Good Comic Comic Book Seventeen Nineteen Film School Illustrators

Author:Gaspar Noe

“I have learned patience, for sure. Pre-publication is a long waiting game, especially for authors of picture books. We write the manuscript, sign the contract, and wait. It takes a while for the art director to find an illustrator and then the illustrator works on the sketches, and depending on those first round of sketches, it could be a few more months before you see a final illustration. I was surprised at how long it takes for all the pieces to come together.”

“Let's create a World's Fair that captures everybody's visions of tomorrow together and let's celebrate that vision. Let's have articles on it with illustrators imagining how we'd be living differently.”

World Together Vision Tomorrow Fairs Celebrate Capture Articles Illustrators

Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Coming from the world of comics, I was very surprised that writers and illustrators, for the most part, don't talk, and they don't collaborate.”

World Illustrators

Author:Gene Luen Yang

“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.”

Writing Doe Play Use Pure Score Representation Cartoonist Borderline Illustrators

Author:Tony Kushner

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

Firsts Ideas Wanted Artist Portraits Cartoon Illustrators

Author:Karl Lagerfeld

“I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.”

“Fifty percent of all meaningful education takes place in the home. What do you share with your child? You share your interests. I was a book person. I read with my son. My wife is an artist. She dragged his little butt around to museums. He's an illustrator of children's books.”

Children Littles Persons Book Home Artist Interest Wife Share Son Percent My Wife Meaningful Your Children Fifty My Son Museums Children's Books Illustrators

Author:Walter Dean Myers

“The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.”

“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.”

Way Art Different Real Artist Study Fields Expression Backgrounds Painter Comic Different Ways Related Designer Graphic Illustrators Graphic Designer

Author:Marjane Satrapi

“After that I jumped, especially being in art school, to the illustrators.”

Art School Art School Illustrators

Author:Bill Sienkiewicz

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Illustrators Quotes