Who is your favorite illustrator and why?

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?

baileyvidler

@Coreyartus I love James Firnhaber!!

Here are my favorites:

Tim Probert - Love his goofy characters
Zoe Persico - Amazing environmental designs and use of color
Cory Godbey - Dreamy line quality
Tony DiTerlizzi - Spiderwick Chronicles was majorly formative on my childhood
Fanny Wen - Lovely use of textures and fun facial expressions

Chantal Goetheer

@Mia-Clarke I love to see how each one's background brings a different set of illustrators to the light for inspiration that we otherwise may have never come across. Great fun to look up all these different lists!

Kristen Lango

I don't know if anyone has said her yet but GuoJing:
Her books make me cry and I'm overwhelmed by her mastery to tell a story with drawings alone.