Illustrators Quotes

• To learn to draw is to draw and draw and draw.

  Andrew Loomis

  Learning, Practice, Drawing

  65 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maurice Sendak

  Artist, Illustration, Ego

  "Sendak at 50" by Selma G. Lanes, www.nytimes.com. April 29, 1979.

  13 Copy quote

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• 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.

  Wallace Tripp

  Book, Shoes, Feet

  46 Copy quote

• Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people.

  Shepard Fairey

  Art, Believe, Ideas

  130 Copy quote

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

  Lois Ehlert

  Book, Sleep, Discovery

  30 Copy quote

• 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.

  Norman Rockwell

  Art, Differences, People

  Norman Rockwell (1994). “Norman Rockwell: Mini Masterpieces”, Outlet

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• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Stories

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• My purpose is to create a mirror for the reader to see themselves, to create a light for people to see themselves in the characters, pictures, and stories. So they resonate.

  Kadir Nelson

  Book, Character, Reflection

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• 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.

  Maurice Sendak

  Falling In Love, Believe, Book

  "Sendak on Sendak". Interview at Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, 2007/2008.

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• I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child.

  Leo Lionni

  Change, Children, Book

  33 Copy quote

• 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

  Love Is, People, Stories

  8 Copy quote

• The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.

  Norman Rockwell

  Life, Moving On, Travel

  "A Rockwell Portrait : An Intimate Biography". Book by Donald Walton (p. 251), 1978.

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• 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.

  Eric Drooker

  Moral, Advertising, Form

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• For children in their most impressionable years, there is, in fantasy, the highest of stimulating and educational powers.

  Arthur Rackham

  Education, Children, Learning

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• I decided honestly that comic art is an art form in itself. It reflects the life and times more accurately and actually is more artistic than magazine illustration - since it is entirely creative. An illustrator works with camera and models; a comic artist begins with a white sheet of paper and dreams up his own business - he is playwright, director, editor and artist at once.

  Alex Raymond

  Dream, Art, Illustration

  Alex Raymond (1990). “Flash Gordon: Mongo, the planet of doom”

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

  Matthea Harvey

  Vision, Artistic, Artwork

  4 Copy quote

• You've got to give kids really beautiful children's books in order to turn them into revolutionaries. Because if they see these beautiful things when they're young, when they grow up they'll see the real world and say, 'Why is the world so ugly?! I remember when the world was beautiful.' And then they'll fight, and they'll have a revolution. They'll fight against all of our corruption in the world, they'll fight to try to make the world more beautiful. That's the job of a good children's book illustrator.

  Tony Millionaire

  Beautiful, Jobs, Children

  6 Copy quote

• Cartoonists are untrained artists, while illustrators are more trained.

  John Kricfalusi

  Artist, Cartoonist

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• 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.

  Jan Brett

  Art, Children, Book

  7 Copy quote

• Try to remember that being unsuccessful in school doesn't automatically mean you'll be unsuccessful in life. Lots of people who didn't excel in school still went on to have successful lives.

  Dav Pilkey

  Success, School, Mean

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• 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.

  Bill Peet

  Children, Book, Writing

  41 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Eine

  Mistake, Cutting, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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.

  Gene Luen Yang

  World

  Source: www.hbook.com

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• 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.

  Tony Kushner

  Writing, Play, Doe

  Tony Kushner's Commencement Address at The School Of Visual Arts in New York City, New York, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 12, 2010.

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• Artists are not helper monkeys; they’re not in it to visualize 'your' story, because it stopped being 'your' story the moment you engaged in a collaborative medium. From here on in, it’s also the artist’s story, and if you’re working with an illustrator who’s any good at all, you as a writer have to tamp down any control-freak tendencies you suffer under and relax into the process.

  Mark Waid

  Artist, Suffering, Relax

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