Illustrators

"I know there have been some encouraging signs. I think people have come a long way even since I started cartooning-I mean, gay marriage wasn't legal when I started. I think our collective vocabulary for social justice issues has improved over time. So on a cultural level, we've made some progress. That keeps me going. I've had people tell me that I've radicalized their teenage daughters. But a lot of what I'm doing shouldn't even be considered radical."

"At first, my strip wasn't very political. But after the 2000 election and then 9/11, the news was so intense that it felt weird to not talk about it. That's when my comic started taking a more political turn. I wish I could do more cultural strips just commenting on everyday life, like facial hair and clothing. But nowadays, with everything so apocalyptic, I feel like I'm being frivolous when I do observational humor, although I still try to slip it in now and then. Politics for me is not so much about individual political figures. It is about these larger cultural phenomena. I feel conflicted about using Trump in cartoons. At first, I didn't even want to draw him. I don't want to normalize him. But then I developed this Trump caricature that people really seem to like... But I think he's more of a symptom of a larger process. I don't want to isolate him as the problem because he's just the tip of the iceberg."

"With all this talk of immigrants assimilating (or not assimilating) into "our culture," it's often implied that said culture is white and Christian. But if you consider that America is, in fact, a highly diverse nation of immigrants, the true outliers seem to be those who view the nation as a monolithic body resembling themselves. If anything, it is these folks who have not fully integrated, and who reject American values."

"Anyone who thinks there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans is a dingdong, Lots of people generalize that they're the same because they both pander to corporate interests. It's true: we live in a plutocracy condoned by a totally ignorant public...I'm not saying Democrats are perfect, but I think there are a lot of good, well-meaning people trapped in the system"

"A lot of my comics are informed by my background in cultural anthropology. That's what I majored in during college. I thought I was going to go to grad school and become a professor. There's a fair amount of overlap between cultural anthropology and cartooning, in that both are about observing culture and deconstructing all these things that we think are normal and set in stone. I've always found it fascinating to look at how we live and question why we do what we do. In college I started reading underground comics by Robert Crumb and Peter Bagge, and I was exposed to Matt Groening's Life in Hell and Roz Chast and Tom Tomorrow for the first time. I actually wrote my senior thesis about a womens' underground comics collective called the Twisted Sisters. One of my favorite cartoonists from this group was the awesomely funky Leslie Sternbergh, who I had the pleasure of befriending years later. Eventually, I got tired of writing papers and burned out on academia. I started to think that maybe I wasn't going to go to grad school, I was just going to draw cartoons."

"Trump (and Bannon and other right-wing authoritarian leaders around the world) is often referred to as a "populist" because he displays faux concern for the working class and a resentment of science and education, but his policies are in fact grotesquely elitist. If by "populist" we mean whipping up resentment against immigrants and people of color, then we should say that. Otherwise, "populism" is just a lazy euphemism for racism."

"It must be nice to live in a world where the truth is whatever you want it to be. In addition to the former oil lobbyist's edits shown in the first panel, the Bush administration also watered down a 2005 G8 statement on global warming. One of the changes was the deletion of the opening statement, "Our world is warming." Global warming is a perfect example of something often treated as a "liberal" issue, one side of a two-sided argument. But it's not, unless you're pro-drowning the people of Tuvalu."

"Cartoons are a great medium for demonstrating just how absurd something is, without ever having to say it directly."

"Very Serious Thinkers are still churning out hacky columns using this dumb binary of "big" vs. "small" government. I saw an ad for The Economist bemoaning the unfortunate necessity of "big government" during the coronavirus crisis. As though the specifics of context and what that government is doing and who it benefits is secondary to some abstract notion of "size. The more relevant divide is "good government vs. bad," or "smart vs. stupid/sadistic.""

"My goal with 'Slowpoke' is to present a solidly-written piece of humor that usually entails some form of social or political commentary exposing distinctly ludicrous aspects of American life."

"Not too long after the Iraq War began, I read an article that quoted a Hummer "patriotic." I guess that's what counts as sacrifice for the war effort these days: driving an overpriced, gas-sucking monstrosity that resembles a military vehicle. I'm sure the troops appreciated this show of solidarity."

"A lot of people called and were actually crying. I feel very emotional. People saw themselves and were able to see their skin."

"As someone who puts books together using words and pictures, I try to remember how special that was to me as a child and balance the pictures and the words in such a way that each of them tells part of the story, but not the whole story and they leave each other plenty of space for the reader to become involved and make connections between the words and the pictures as he or she examines them, both the pictures and the reacts to the music of the words. Going with the musical analogy, A well-illustrated book is like a beautiful duet where you have two voices that are making music together, but they each have their own sound, their own tone and they're each dealing with their own piece of the music. Where the two parts come together, they create a new whole that soars above the sum of its parts and creates something that is more beautiful and more meaningful, more compelling than either voice was by itself."

"The experienced illustrator subscribes to the principle of the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Should inspiration whisk down your chimney, be at your table. The first ten thousand drawings are the hardest. Put another way, you have ten thousand bad drawings within and should expel them as quickly as possible."

"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."

"Genius is rare as turtle fangs, but talent is common enough."

"If it's a good project and I feel I have something to add, it's really rewarding."

"It seemed my covers sold the magazines, and other publishers started to call. What it did was start me off in this direction of action, complexity, and telling a story. If you look at everything throughout my career, you’ll see that it’s all based on this early training. That’s what prepared me to do all sorts of genres later. The constant through my career is that I have enjoyed every minute of it."

"Draw from your imagination and read whatever gets you excited."

"Art with layers inspires me – not only physical paint layers, but layered conceptual meanings."

"I like my creations to be thought-provoking and not have a narrative. Creating mystery and questions are key elements in my work."

"You can stump yourself if you try too hard or something, but everybody has a gift for something, and, people who do what I do, they can envision things so it’s not difficult. Once you get to a point as an artist — the type of artist I am — where you can envision it and then you can draw what you see in your mind, then you’re pretty much unleashed."

"Seeing both my parents work on their own projects and my dad create book after book made me realize early on how exciting and gratifying the art and bookmaking process could be."

"A true graphic novel can be very satisfying and it really is a form of story telling that is not a book and not a movie."

"Obsession with The Hobbit turns into career as fantasy illustrator (May 4, 2012)"

"The way to draw characters is always in constant evolution: the more you draw and improve your technique, the more you see yourself able to find different aspects to represent all kinds of psychological behaviors and expressions. At the same time, trying different techniques allows you to discover that some of these techniques let you do easily textures that you can use to create atmospheres and different kinds of shadows and illuminations. As it’s important to mature in your personal life, it is equally important for your language when you create an illustration as well. One insignificant situation can be a beautiful visual poem depending on how you represent it."

"Veganism is the direct response of my activism with animal rights. For me, to defend and protect animals means not to eat them, use them as clothes, use products tasted on them, pay people that want to show them in cages, all this. It is like someone that works for an ONG that protects children in poor countries: he would never buy products made by children under slavery conditions, wouldn’t he? It is a matter of being coherent with oneself, you cannot separate the two things."

"I really tried very hard to not repeat color schemes, every one of the Goosebumps covers had its own set of colors. Different variations. I’m using the same six ingredients, but I’m mixing them up in a different way and hopefully it tastes different when you get it."

"I’ll do good work, and I’ll get it done on time. Getting work done on time in the book business is as important as doing good art."

"People know my work, they know specifics about it, a lot of them know the history about it, as an artist that’s the coolest thing ever."

"I put in hours and hours, and weeks, to create something that people are going to react to in three seconds, and they’re either going to like it, or they’re not going to like it, they won’t warm up to it, they won’t do anything, they’re going to have an immediate visceral response."

"I am best known for painting scary pictures, but I’m not into scary that much, yeah, that’s completely ironic."

"There is no greater pleasure for me than to have someone see a painting or a sketch of mine and say to me “yes, that’s exactly how I always pictured it!."

"I’ve realized that as long as I trust in my instincts and love of his work, there is room for much variation in interpretation of even detailed descriptions. Which is a reason to love many other artists’ versions of the scenes, too."

"I was destined from early childhood. I drew anything and everything. Later when I developed my abilities in high school, I was inspired by storybook illustrations, traditional landscape paintings, surrealism, science fiction art and automotive advertising art. I wanted to use my talents for something along those lines, rather than 'fine art' per se."

"I don’t really the count hours I put into my paintings, to be quite honest. I suspect I might be surprised at how many it takes for an average artwork, because before I even begin painting I’ll tend to ‘lose myself’ in making the drawings and corrections and variations involved in the preliminary stage."

"As with any classic novel, each subsequent reading teaches me a bit more about myself, about the greater world, and about the nature of life and mystery; because at each reading, I approach the texts as a different person."

"Tolkien takes the stance that I believe all of us should take; that is, of decent, though fallible, people struggling against evil. He does not wallow in horrible scenes and images, though horrible events are certainly depicted in his writings. Rather, he dwells on hope, on perseverance, on faith, on honour, and on love. As a result of Tolkien’s own stance, I have rarely painted or sketched a scene from Middle-earth that was deliberately ugly, or dark, or that I intended should in any way glorify or honour the power or the triumph of evil. I wish to follow Tolkien in highlighting light, and life, and the deeply-felt longing we all have for the good, the true, and the beautiful."

"I think of the art of illustration as essentially one of collaboration. It’s a wonderful thing to work with a writer and to discuss ideas and make sure the writer is completely in harmony with and happy with the things I’ve added to the mix."

"My Mother worked for one of the leading theatrical costumiers in London during the early part of the fifties, so I was from the outset caught up, so to speak, in the most intimate workings of the Illusion Machine. Not many young boys knew about the inflatable bra of a particular Hollywood star and the problem of its wayward valves in the fitting room. My toy chests overflowed with the cast offs and oddments from a score of film and theatre productions. And all these years on I often wonder what happened to those chests. Maybe the unsolicited kiss that old crone gave me on the long seat of the red bus in Whalley Range has something to do with it? I was mesmerized by the sheer flurry of it all and receptive to everything that was weird and wonderful. Fact and Fiction were very much in contention and strange worlds could still be reached through the backs of cupboards, if you knew where to look. Bubble gum was made from everglades swamp water and that was a fact."

"For me, the edges of a picture are the most important areas. I like to think of the image as a small segment of a much larger scene, so that you feel that, if you could see behind the edges of the "snapshot" there would be something equally, or more, interesting going on. It's a window into another world, but you don't necessarily have to see the window frame. You might even see more clearly without it."

"I admire much of what I’ve seen in digital painting and drawing, and understand its importance as a new medium with limitless potential, but like synthesized sounds in music, it is telling that it seeks to imitate established art-styles and looks. That’s a practical issue, since it means its traditional-looking artwork can also be transmitted over the internet, and has a life of its own in the cyber realm."

"The more adept one becomes at line work, the more harmonic the composition becomes, the flow and sense of time is arrested by the simple act of truncation, by the edge of the paper or the introduction of a retaining frame. This does not curtail the anticipation of more movement beyond the barrier, that is implicit, but rather causes the eye / cognitive senses to pause and consider the proffered fragment. Time frozen. There is a time in the image making process when the image speaks back to you, and it is always important that you respond to these calls, if you wish to avoid a still-born, airless image."

"I’m not free to do whatever I like stylistically, since my work is going to be wedded to the words. The responsibility is to help to tell the story, without interfering with the readers’ imagination. In a way it is a bit more akin to a sets designer or to providing music for a film. You are serving the text and you are serving the story. So that’s what I do. I’m an illustrator. But I think you have to be an artist to be able to do that as effectively I can."

"Even if you live to one hundred, you’ll still be dead forever."

"Death is nature’s way of staying in charge."

"The womb is the first portal to the hereafter."

"The only good artist is a dead artist."

"The rumors of my death are only a pending reality."

"Death is more interesting from a distance."