To my mind, the most successful and the best comic book illustrators are those who translate the real world into a consistent code. If you look at Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, their drawings look nothing like the real world, but they are internally consistent. In terms of a comic book it can work just fine.

Dave Gibbons

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.

Abbi Jacobson

Work Love Experience

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.

Adrian Tomine

Time Car Art

I never knew what my role in art was, because I was such a deep appreciator and such a passionate appreciator. But every time I would try to sit down and be an illustrator or painter, it was just not my best use.

Alexa Hirschfeld

Time Art Would

In the summer of 1866, as Leo Tolstoy prepared for his serialized novel 'War and Peace' to be published as a single volume, he wrote to illustrator Mikhail Bashilov, hoping to commission drawings for the new edition of the novel, which he referred to by its original title,1805.

Alexander Chee

War Peace Wrote

Fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez was a major part of my early career.

Andre Leon Talley

Car Art Us

I'm impressed by the way some illustrators develop their images on computers, but it's too late for me to start, and I'm still in love with paper and paint and pencils.

Anthony Browne

Love Computers Art

After art college, I got a job as a medical illustrator, and I was pretty good. I had to imagine what was going on in the operations because the photographs just showed a mess.

Anthony Browne

Medical Good Art

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time - very inspiring and dramatic.

Bat for Lashes

Time Amazing Which

I love writing picture books and story books because of the exciting, visual life that artists and illustrators give to them. And most of all, I love writing novels because of the inner, emotional journeys that they take me on. Hopefully, the reader comes with me!

Berlie Doherty

Love Life Hope

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.

Bill Plympton

Experience Communication Car

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

Bill Sienkiewicz

Art Us T

The only people left in America who seem not to be artists are illustrators.

Brad Holland

Art Who Us

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.

Brian Michael Bendis

Work Art Worked

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.

Brian Selznick

Men Design Us

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.

Brian Selznick

Work Travel Time

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.

Brian Selznick

Work Love Writers

A lot of illustrators have one central character and then they develop it, and all their books are based around it. But that was not my wish. I wanted to introduce children to the whole creative side of many aspects of life.

Brian Wildsmith

Life Wish Whole

In England, there is a dividing line between artists and illustrators, who are thought inferior to painters. Well, that's absolute rubbish. Some of the most creative work is being done in children's books. In Japan, everything is art. They don't say painting is better than ceramics or dress design.

Brian Wildsmith

Work Design Art

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.

Chris Renaud

Movies Way Want

The computer is a tool, just like pencil or charcoal, allowing illustrators to manipulate images from their sketchbooks.

Chris Riddell

Age Wing Win

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.

Chris Riddell

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.

Chris Riddell

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

Chris Riddell

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

Chris Van Allsburg

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.

Chris Ware

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.

Daniel Handler

To my mind, the most successful and the best comic book illustrators are those who translate the real world into a consistent code. If you look at Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, their drawings look nothing like the real world, but they are internally consistent. In terms of a comic book it can work just fine.

Dave Gibbons

When I work as an art director, I don't ask to see sketches from illustrators or photographers. I give them a basic idea, and then I say, 'Send it to me, it'll be fine' - I get out of the way.

David Carson

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

David Hepworth

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.'

Dean Kamen

That's something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for.

Eric Carle

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.

George Lucas

We've lost these qualities, these abilities to do something by hand. Some illustrators have it still, but it's just not art. We have photography. We have cameras and computers that do it better and faster.

Gerhard Richter

I was influenced by Ray Harryhausen and Lotte Reiniger, with her twitchy, cutout animation, which I happened to see at a very young age, but also by the Warner Bros. cartoons, 'Tom and Jerry,' and of course Disney. And also by Fellini's 'Giulietta of the Spirits' and Kurosawa's 'Ran.' And by other American illustrators and painters.

Henry Selick

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

Ira Levin

I am the first to point out that I really am not kind to illustrators. By that, I mean I really don't give that much to work with.

James A. Moore

My older sister achieved her dream of being an artist. She's an illustrator living in Manhattan.

Jeannette Walls

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

Jeff Vandermeer

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.

John Howe

Cartoonists are untrained artists, while illustrators are more trained.

John Kricfalusi

Not very many people can draw who are illustrators today.

John Kricfalusi

As an artist, illustrator, and photographer, most of my daily work was formed around the Art & Entertainment business, which was about packaging ideas that looked like they were crafted as artist ideas. In the distributed products, my artist credit was hidden inside the package of the artist or entertainment personality.

John Van Hamersveld

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

Judith Viorst

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

Karl Lagerfeld

I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.

Karl Lagerfeld

I would like to champion diverse forms like graphic novels and works told in verse and diverse writers and illustrators and diverse authors as well.

Malorie Blackman

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.

Marjane Satrapi

I don't want to inspire the next generation of tight ends or linebackers to play the game. If I could inspire the next generation of architects and technology leaders and writers and illustrators and film directors, then I feel like I have fulfilled my life purpose.

Martellus Bennett

It's like a candy store for an illustrator, I connected with Harry pretty quickly and loved the way J.K. described everything; she's such a visually thinking person. You can't pass that up.

Mary Grandpre

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

Maurice Sendak