Top 259 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Illustrators - Page 2

It was a startling task to undertake, for the Book of Mormon had never been illustrated before, at least on any professional level. There were no precedents.

I think the two jobs I dreamed of doing as a teenager were comic book artist and record cover illustrator. Maybe film director was in the mix as well, but that seemed to be an impossible mountain to climb.

To believe in faeries is to step into an enchanted space where the rational mind meets the irrational heart, and all things become possible.

Have you ever studied a snake's face? - how optimistic they look. They have an eternal smile.

It doth make a man better,' quoth Robin Hood, 'to bear of those noble men so long ago. When one doth list to such tales, his soul doth say, 'put by thy poor little likings and seek to do likewise.' Truly, one may not do as nobly one's self, but in the striving one is better.

At the edge of our world, at the edge of the otherworld, the beautiful and mysterious faeries stand, watching and waiting to greet us, inviting us to journey with them as our guides while we walk the infinite paths of the Faerie.

I spend as much time as I can sketching from nature, Dartmoor contains such a rich variety of landscape, as many boulders, foaming rivers and twisted trees as my heart could ever desire. . . . When I look into a river, I feel I could spend a whole lifetime just painting that river.

Students generally have very little idea of the world they are entering into, and their teachers - like parents - are viewed as beings who alternately guide and admonish; rarely are those teachers viewed as individuals or is their professional standing considered. It is usually only afterward, when young people encounter real-life situations in their chosen professions that they sometimes learn (if they are lucky) that they studied with one of the greats.

Young people, don't get the idea that you have an artistic temperament which must be humored. Don't believe you cannot do good work unless you feel in tile mood for it. That is all nonsense. I frequently have to force myself to make a start in the morning; but after a short while I find I can work. Only hard and regular work will bring success.

I'm a huge science fan; I read a lot of science books. But I'm not a scientist, my interest in science is I love the facts, but I like to interpret those facts. They become the raw materials for stories and paintings and things.

Research is always a very necessary part of my process because all of my books to this point have been historical. Time spent in the library adds to one's wealth as a writer or artist.

Though the blame cannot be placed entirely on publishers, I do think a more diverse pool of editors would go a long way toward broadening the perspective. Our role is to work together to create books that act as wide-open doors - books that allow all children to walk through and feel safe enough to stay.

I'm often in conversations with people who have learning disabilities, and they talk about how they were teased and perhaps laughed at sometimes as children. That was never the case with me. Maybe it was something about my personality, my temperament, but I don't ever remember being teased. I remember the awkwardness of leaving class to go to a special class, but that's all.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We are nothing, but dust and to dust we shall return. Amen.

I managed to potter along tolerably well in the morning, sitting in the sun and sketching the old buildings... but in the afternoon, sitting in the shade... with stiff fingers and chilled bones... the water froze in little cakes all over the picture.

It was ironic that there I was finally painting the pictures I'd always wanted to paint and feeling very much at home in the countryside, and I ended up working in New York City, which is definitely the archetypal city.

Spirits were seen to be very much part of the everyday world, and you were accosted by spirits all the time. It's only really quite recently that we've relegated the fantastic as being just imagination and not real and having no purpose.

The myths and legends about Faerie are many and diverse, and often contradictory. Only one thing is certain - that nothing is certain. All things are possible in the land of Faerie.

For a long time religion made me feel guilty for being involved in music. Growing up, the religion I grew up in, the Church of Christ, encouraged a capella, but didn't allow musical instruments, so even though my parents allowed me to play trumpet in the band, and I was pretty good at it, it had this baggage.

I don't make proper flower arrangements; mine just grow, like the garden.

If you do the best work you can, the reward is ultimately your self-satisfaction - the sense that you have done the best you can. And then there's that piece of how others respond.

You should see my corgis at sunset in the snow. It's their finest hour. About five o'clock they glow like copper. Then they come in and lie in front of the fire like a string of sausages.

Talk about life - but in your own way.

I have never done a stroke of work in my life.

I pray, but who I pray to I'm not exactly sure, especially when I'm praying for more money.

I think kids need to be allowed to be more creative and learn more about artists these days, so I'm all about that.

Art is the expression of those beauties and emotions that stir the human soul.

I don't like making fake things. And digital images that look like fake paintings disturb me. But when they don't look fake, I don't really have a problem with it. You're not looking at an original piece of art anyway: when it gets scanned for printing it becomes digital.

I loved The Wind in the Willows. ... Walt Disney should be sued for cheapening it as he did. Imagine it, Mickey Mousing all those nice characters. I'm surprised he didn't do it with the New Testament.

Some people are just destined to be together. That's just the way it is.

My passion is writing comics and storytelling, and I'm constantly working to improve. I hit my deadlines, I know how to work with and artists, I'm professional, and I bring my A-game every time.

The inspiration is all in the script, in the text. So whatever it is, either it is a film or a book to be illustrated, anything. Everything you need to know is in the text. So the thing is trying to find right tone and voice, the right style, the right way of expressing the emotions in a story or in the location of the story, but it is all in the text.

Nowadays, people are so jeezled up. If they took some chamomile tea and spent more time rocking on the porch in the evening listening to the liquid song of the hermit thrush, they might enjoy life more.

My method is subtraction. I use erasers to make the images in my paintings. You really have to see it to fully get it, but it is basically erasing shapes from a background of paint.

There's probably more of a struggle to get material and narratives published that really speak to black culture. And that has a lot to do with the mergers and buyouts and the corporations being more in control of the purse strings. We find that the projects have to come with higher expectations rather than books that just should be published. That's disturbing because we might find fewer and fewer children's books by African Americans or with black cultural themes.

I'm not writing anything out of some sense of obligation, or for marketing purposes. This is just what I prefer to write. Even though I write mostly for kids, I'm not out to teach a moral lesson or present a guidebook for life. My primary goal as a writer is to create fun, entertaining books that present interesting ideas and themes, so kids can have a break from the stresses of their lives. I got a fan letter once from a girl who said one of my books made her feel good about herself, and if there's anything I'm reaching for, it's that.

My stuff is generally quite collage-y anyway. So it's sort-of suited to gathering raw materials like shooting actors, then making stills or animating characters, then just bringing them all together in a 3D space. That process is very close to my 2D work anyway.

The big problem for comic art is you don't want to overwork it. If a drawing is overworked it isn't funny. It's the spontaneity that keeps a work fresh and funny. If they can see how hard you work, if they can see the beads of sweat, it's no good. I always try to make it look easy.

You who so plod amid serious things that you feel it shame to give yourself up even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in the land of Fancy; you who think that life hath not to do with innocent laughter that can harm no one; these pages are not for you.

The reason I love comics is that they DON'T move, and there is NO sound. As a creator I have to evoke those elements in the drawings and writing, and the reader has to create those elements in their own minds.

Creativity is like chasing chickens.

I do think it's important to expose kids to artists.

If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let them be accursed at His coming. God save you from your fate. Amen!

Make it all about the work. Everything else will follow.

People like being alike, joining up, and being part of something.

I like stories that exist both in the naturalistic world and in our imaginative lives, films are so immersive in that sense, we can explore how our characters think and dream, as well as how they exist in the real world.

Reading a good comic is a creative act. Watching a film is often a more passive experience, and since I'm interested in engaging that conversational aspect of creativity, I'm trying to find ways of achieving that in my films.

I’ve always been a sponge, just absorbing whatever I see, whether it’s in daily life or in art.

I always believed that the picture itself should tell the story.

I always get scared doing a job. To this day, I start every job thinking, I really can't do this. And what I do when I'm insecure is I tighten up. If you work through the night you can do anything.

Nobody wanted to publish a book about fairies; they said people wouldn't be interested. Luckily, I discovered Lady Cottington and her pressed fairies, which revived a huge amount of interest in fairies, so I could go ahead and do the book I wanted to do.

I've always used masks. I think it's a lot about the fact that masks often reveal a sort of subconscious element to a character. The mask is carved and given an expression or markings to reveal something, even though it's shielding the face. Even though it's hiding the face, it seems to reveal something underneath.

If you keep pushing paint when you're tired of it, you lose sensitivity. I can only focus on painting for a few hours, so I'll stop and work on something quite different.

I live in a house that's incredibly old, and it's typical that part of it is slightly in the ground. It's very earthed. It's almost like living in a hobbit house.

Animal personalities have always intrigued me, the desire to find out more about them made a reader out of me.

But who does not see that the work goes beyond the one who created it? It marches before him and he will never again be able to catch up with it, it soon leaves his orbit, it will soon belong to another, since he, more quickly than his work, changes and becomes deformed, since before his work dies, he dies.

Christmas is not only where you find it; it's what you make of it.

I loved to draw. I always did. I started when I was about five years old.

I kind of enjoy the limits. If you've got no limits, you can do absolutely anything, it's very difficult, actually. I always enjoyed working with machines like color photocopiers and letter-pressing type settings, things where the limits are very apparent. You push the machine to do something, and it tries to do its best, and it usually has wonderful qualities all of its own. Then you get a sort of dialogue going, and the limitations become qualities.

Cat lovers can readily be identified. Their clothes always look old and well used. Their sheets look like bath towels, and their bath towels look like a collection of knitting mistakes.