Who is your favorite illustrator and why?

AngelinaKizz

I'm curious to see a compiled list of everyone's favorite illustrators (you know besides the obvious Jake, will, and Lee). I'm taking my kids to the library this afternoon, and I can't wait to dive into books just to study the illustrations. I can't say I've done that yet, but I read to my kids every night. I feel like my favorites are all Instagram illustrators just doing spot illos, and that I need to shift that to illustrators that can tell amazing stories in children's books.

For Instagram illustrators, I love pascal campion, Chris Hong, Marcin Piwowarski, Sue Rahel, Simone Grunwald.

I find I'm mostly drawn to illustrations with soft lines and texture.

Asyas_illos

@AngelinaKizz yay fun!

Paddy Donnelly (newest fave)
Jerome pelissier
Dan Santat (duh)
Jon klassen(of course)
Rebecca green
Anna Davis court
Forrest Burdett(don’t think he has any actually out yet?)
Oh and Mary GrandPré

Edit: old favorites of mine include Graeme base, Maurice Sendak, Richard egielski, Richard scarry

Is my list too long? I have more…

Asyas_illos

@AngelinaKizz oh sorry I didn’t add whys

AngelinaKizz

@Asyas_illos I love that list! I'm gonna look up each one ♡

kirsten-mcg

@AngelinaKizz Ooooh one of my favorite subjects to talk about! I hope we get lots of others chiming in because I'm always on the hunt for more inspiring children's books. I read to my 3 year old every night too, and it's a huge bonus if I love the art and story! Some of my favorite picture book illustrators are:

Juana Martinez-Neil (La Princessa and the Pea)
Kelsey Gerrity Riley (You are a Beautiful Beginning)
Jaime Zollars (The Truth about Dragons)
Jill McElmurry (We Share the Bread)
Chris Van Allsburg
Mary GrandPre (The Wee Hours)
Aaron Becker
Eliza Wheeler (When You Are Brave)
Molly Idle

A lot of these I have a favorite book by them, so I've included those in parentheses by their name. It's sort of a mix of old pros and more contemporary illustrators and everything in between!

kirsten-mcg

@Asyas_illos There's not such thing as too long of a list of amazing picture books!!

Coreyartus

I am a huge fan of:

• Rogério Coelho because of his expressive shape language, textural drawing and rendering, and fantastical compositions

• Pamela Zagarenski because of her mystical/lyrical compositions and layered multimedia textures

• James Firnhaber for his wonderful use of light, his line quality, and his compositions

• Frederic Pillot for his everything

• Arch Apolar for his capacity to channel J.C. Leyendecker

• Johan Egerkrans for his mythic storytelling poster prints, his style, and how he is a working artist marketing his own stuff as much as he is a freelancer working for others.

I find more favorites every day.

But I should point out that at no other point in history are we, as artists and illustrators, exposed so easily and completely to the portfolios and bodies of work of so many other artists... Unlike just 25 years ago, most artists found other artists through books, libraries, periodicals, and museums. They might peruse several industry-oriented "collection volumes", but no one could pull out a phone and stream through the best works of an artist they just discovered 2 minutes ago. Multiply that times millions of artists both professional and amateur...

I have to wonder what that's doing to our internal understandings of how we're inspired, what we prefer, how we study those we like, what we learn from our inspirations, and how we then in turn create work that so many others can see so very easily and quickly and then move on... That hasn't ever happened before... On a smaller scale with advertising and periodicals, of course, but never on the scale and magnitude we can find in our own back pockets on our phones 24 hours a day.

Newer illustrators of today aren't developing in the same way they did a couple decades ago. They're experiencing a very different path that is sometimes hard for older artists and illustrators to fully comprehend.

For me, personally, I think it makes it harder to make choices. It feels harder to have clear favorites, and to emulate those favorites. And It affects my capacity to deeply contemplate those favorites because there's so much more to look at.

Food for thought.

Laurasketches

Anything by Trina Schart Hyman. I wanted to be her when I grew up (sans the smoking habit).

AngelinaKizz

@Coreyartus I completely, and wholeheartedly agree with you. Gone are the days of needing a trip to the library to experience something new. The amount of visual library out there, is honestly overwhelming. I also find that more of my children's books are blah on the illustrating front (and the more I learn here, the more critical I am of what's actually been published lol) than awe inspiring. So many feel too cookie cutter digital, and very flat.

I really love the illustrations in nick blands angry bear books, I love his textures, and the emotions he's captured, and the color palettes... and most of all his humor.

I also really love Peter Reynolds. His art draws me right in, even though it's mostly black and white, with splashes of color here and there.

Nyrryl Cadiz

@AngelinaKizz currently been super into:

Paola Escobar
https://www.instagram.com/paoesco8ar/

Anuka Baratashvili
https://www.instagram.com/anukkaart/

Sari Shryack
https://www.instagram.com/not_sorry_art/

the new style I'm developing is a combination of these amazing artists' styles

AngelinaKizz

@Nyrryl-Cadiz oh I love how Paola Escobar uses such colorful palettes without her images being overwhelming to look at! And I've followed Anuka for a while, I love her style! Thankyou for sharing.

randarrington

wow...so many that's it's nearly impossible to pick a favorite....but I can list those I love the most

Frank Frazetta
Paul Bonner
Keith Parkinson
James Gurney
Clyde Caldwell
Brom
N C Wyeth
JC Leyendecker
Vargas
Patrick Jones
Justin Sweet
Gregory Manchess
Peter de Seve
Barry Windsor Smith
Travis Charest
Bryan Hitch
Adam Hughes

I could honestly go on....

AngelinaKizz

@randarrington oh that's a great list! I'm gonna go through each one!

I love this, I've followed a bunch of new artists and it's super inspiring

ArtMelC

@AngelinaKizz I am leaning towards traditional and textured looks, so I am going to list:

Mae Besom: I love how she effectively uses very limited colour palette in the "What do you do with an idea" series and her ability to draw what is essentially a very abstract concept of "idea" and "problem".
Charles Santoso: heartwarming detailed animal drawing with lots of awww factor (books: Ida always, I don't like Koala, Finding muchness)
Daniel Miyares: I love that he tells a story without words. Check out his wordless picture book "Float"
Dan Santat: Texture, composition, lighting, relatable characters, all of them
Carson Ellis: quirky characters, simple but effective style

There are many more but that should be enough to send you on a nice quest

Melissa_Bailey

Oooh! Great lists!

There are so many, and some of my favorite illustrators have already been mentioned: Charles Santoso, Dan Santat, Jon Klassen, Molly Idle, Juana Martinez-Neal, James Gurney, etc.

Here are a few more favorites:

Erin E. Stead (A Sick Day for Amos McGee, Bear Has a Story to Tell, The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles, and more) -- she won the Caldecott for Amos McGee & is one of my favorite all-time illustrators. LOVE her style.
Beatrix Potter and Eloise Wilkins -- These were my favorites as a kid, one of the earliest inspirations I remember for wanting to be an illustrator.
David Wiesner (Tuesday, Flotsam, The Three Pigs, and my personal favorite, Art and Max) -- another illustrator who is everyone's favorite, a Caldecott winner.
Ryan T. Higgins (author-illustrator of the Mother Bruce books and another favorite book, We Don't Eat Our Classmates)
Jason Chin (Grand Canyon, Watercress, Nine Months, Water Is Water) -- he's brilliant. Won the Caldecott this year.
Amy June Bates (The Big Umbrella, When I Draw a Panda)
Matthew Forsythe (The Brilliant Deep, Pokko and the Drum, Mina)
Corrina Luyken (My Heart, Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have a Horse, The Tree in Me)
David Roberts (Iggy Peck, Architect & all the Imagineers books, The Prince and the Porker)
Brian Lies (Bats at the Library & all the Bats books, Got to Get to Bears, The Rough Patch)
Adam Rex (On Account of the Gum, Nothing Rhymes With Orange, Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem--seriously, read it)

There are SO many more. But this list is long enough so I'll stop there.

kirsten-mcg

@AngelinaKizz I feel much the same. There have been so many times at the library when I've snuck a picture book back on the shelf that one of my kids picked out because I couldn't stand the thought of reading through it over and over and staring at those illustrations!

Asyas_illos

@kirsten-mcg

Max Lakonsky

@Coreyartus said in Who is your favorite illustrator and why?:

James Firnhaber

I really like Simone Grunwald and James Firnhaber's illustrations because they're both so detailed and they have such a unique style. I also think they're both amazing at capturing emotion in their illustrations, which is something I really appreciate.

Mia Clarke

There are many, ofc, but for me my top 3 would be

Birgitta Sif
Birgitta has a beautiful, scratchy style, and produces calm, grounded work that really speaks of her Icelandic heritage (which, in turn, speaks directly to my Swedish heart). She is an author-illustrator, and teaches children's book illustration at Cambridge.
Sven Nordqvist
Sven is a Swedish author-illustrator who produces those type of images that you can look at forever, and find new stuff in everytime you look. He's a master of playing with scale and perspective, and is really, really strong in gesture and expression.
John Bauer
Bauer's images were the first ones I remember getting spellbound by, and to this day I find them astonishingly beautiful. His use of muted colours and light is amazing, and somthing I would love to be able to emulate in my own work.

Chantal Goetheer

@AngelinaKizz
Maybe my favourite is Jan van Lierd. He has a very distinct style, very humorous and great colour palettes. https://janvanlierde.be/vriend

I loved the minimoni books of Rocio Bonilla, a good example of storytelling through his illustrations. Also lots of humour and expression https://www.rociobonilla.com/

An other great storyteller is Aaron Becker. I love those illustrations that take you into this story without words needed. My parents couldnt read it to our kids though, they didn't understand it at all.
https://www.storybreathing.com/

An other great Dutch illustrator is Mies van Hout. She has at times a more childish style and at times more traditional, but beautiful colour use and very expressive
https://www.miesvanhout.nl/books

And I also like non traditional techniques that I sometimes come across in books. Anna llenas with the colour monster books and Geertje Aalders. They use paper cuttings in their illustrations. I love seeing really creative mixed media use in illustration and story telling.
https://www.geertjeaalders.nl/category/boeken/
http://www.annallenas.com/#2

There are more that I admire to the beauty of their illustrations, but I do notice now that I pay attention to it that in terms of storytelling very often exactly that is illustrated that is also told in words. Do my kids pick the wrong books from the library or is that the most common way?