Top 87 Illustrator Quotes & Sayings

As an illustrator you need to understand the human body - but having looked at and understood nature, you must develop an ability to look away and capture the balance between what you've seen and what you imagine.

I had a job as an illustrator, and I wanted to change the direction of my work. I moved to the country, and immediately I started to paint fairies and trolls.

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

My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.

I grew up wanting only to be an illustrator. I studied art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College.

Usually, an author writes a manuscript that is handed in to the editor. The editor will then work with an art director to find just the right illustrator for the job, and off they go. Many times, the illustrator and author never meet.

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.

As an undergraduate I held many small jobs as an illustrator.

Andy [Warhol] was on the scene, but he wasn't an artist at first; he was more an illustrator. He was always surrounded by about ten people who worshipped him. He'd go to a party and they would all come along. But he was drawing shoes and that sort of thing.

The illustrator is essentially a reporter: his subjects come from the outside, lit by a flash. A subject comes to the classical artist from inside, and when he discovers confirmation of it in the outside world he feels that it has been there all the time.

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.'

I wasn't a very good illustrator so I became a designer.

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.

I grew up under the spell of London. Illustrator Kerry Lee's evocative 1950 wall map of the city hung above our breakfast table at home in Canada. Over my corn flakes, I traced the capital's high roads and medieval alleys.

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.

You don't put your head above the parapet and become a personality if you're an illustrator - it's not part of it; it's not possible. You are a servant to the story.

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.

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.

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.

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

Kendrick Lamar taught me that life experience is an important part of being a good illustrator. When you're illustrating a story, you have to go based off of your personal experiences.

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.

I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.

When I illustrate a cover or a book, I draw upon what the author tells me; that's how I see my responsibility as an illustrator. J.K. Rowling is very descriptive in her writing — she gives an illustrator a lot to work with. Each story is packed full of rich visual descriptions of the atmosphere, the mood, the setting, and all the different creatures and people. She makes it easy for me. The images just develop as I sketch and retrace until it feels right and matches her vision.

In my youth I dreamed of being an illustrator.

I don't think there's an illustrator who's as good as a Titian or a Rembrandt... but then, Rembrandt was a bit of an illustrator on the quiet, you know?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I wanted to do comic books... as a comic book artist, as an illustrator. But I'm not very good so I thought I should do something else! So I went to a film school when I was seventeen and came out when I was nineteen.

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

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

For a while, I just thought that I wanted to be an illustrator because that's all I wanted to do. I also did some sculpting. It was always very artsy and very feminine, everything that I did.

I'm sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of five, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book.

I've been very lucky. I've had three separate careers: freelance illustrator, then set designer, puppetteer and animator, and now fine artist. I just bluffed my way into every one of 'em!

I had started out my grown-up life in New York City, but I couldn't figure out how to be an actor there. And so I had been a magazine illustrator instead.

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.

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.

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.

Artist and illustrator R. Crumb did a whole illustration of Genesis. And he didn't go away from the text; he was totally truthful. Reading through that, I was like, "Oh, wow, it's a comic-book version of the Bible." There's a lot of heavy-duty stuff that goes on that doesn't make it into Sunday school.

I was going to be a storybook illustrator or an editorial illustrator. I ended up in a comics class by mistake because all the others were full, so I was like 'I'll stay for one class, and then I'll go take something else, because I don't care about comics.' I got pulled in really fast; I discovered I had a voice in comics that I didn't know I had.

I have learned patience, for sure. Pre-publication is a long waiting game, especially for authors of picture books. We write the manuscript, sign the contract, and wait. It takes a while for the art director to find an illustrator and then the illustrator works on the sketches, and depending on those first round of sketches, it could be a few more months before you see a final illustration. I was surprised at how long it takes for all the pieces to come together.

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

I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a book illustrator. I used to hurry home from school and draw.

The reason I love comics and have collected them for 37 years is because I always wanted to be an illustrator and a writer - and comics are really the perfect blend of those two mediums.

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.

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

Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story.

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.

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

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.

I'm a classically trained painter, and I was an illustrator in New York working with Fortune 500s companies as well as the NBA and the Olympics. I first got into sculpting when I created a sculpture based on a painting I had done for the 1984 Olympics.

Balancing an illustrator and author can be tricky, but I was an illustrator mostly before I wrote my books.

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

I do believe this to be the over-arching philosophy behind most of the books I've fallen in love with over the years. The more personal and heartfelt the story is for the author and/or illustrator of the book, the more universal the emotion that can be gleaned from it.

I wound up studying art and design, got a job at Lonely Planet Publications as a designer, cartographer and illustrator.

Speaking of line, what artist of line was ever able to find more depth and volume than Hirschfeld? He was an illustrator and a caricaturist, but first and foremost, an artist.