Favorite Illustrators

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Favorite Illustrators

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1arthurfrayn
Dic 22, 2008, 1:03 am

Here's another easy one-favorite illustrators-
Here's mine again:

James Bama
Robert McGinnis
Dean Cornwell
Norman Rockwell
Mead Schaeffer
Gregory Manchess
Albert Dorne
Drew Struzan
Edwin Austin Abbey
James Avati
Sebastian Kruger

2illustrationfan
Dic 22, 2008, 1:38 am

For Me... Franklin Booth.. A close second would be Bernie Wrightson's amazing illustrations on Frankenstein.....

Next would be Willy Pogány and Arthur Rackham

3battlinjack
Dic 22, 2008, 2:57 am

Actually, this is a hard question. I have many favorites in many different genres. Classic illustration like Egon Schiele to comic books like Bernie Wrightson, Mike Mignola and Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri or sci-fi illustration from Alex Shomburg.

Since I also have a hard picking just one or ten, it would be a LONG list!

4arthurfrayn
Dic 22, 2008, 9:44 am

I think that's OK though, it will kind of set up a general point of reference.
Go for it -put them all down. And when you're done, put all your comic art favorites down in the other thread! ;)

5illustrationfan
Dic 22, 2008, 8:20 pm

Yes! Egon Schiele.. died way too young!! A true pioneer.. and his passing was just months after the passing of Klimt..

6dinoboy
Dic 23, 2008, 4:16 am

-Leyendecker
-Ivan Bilibin
-Frank Godwin
-Jeffrey Jones
-Frazetta
-N.C. Wyeth
-Jack Davis
-Carl Larsson
-W. Heath Robinson

7johnnyapollo
Dic 23, 2008, 11:15 am

Another tough one...

James Bama
Franklin Booth
Jack Davis
Virgil Finlay
Hal Foster
Frank Frazetta
Frank Kelly Freas
Roy Krenkel
Winsor McCay
Alphonse Mucha
Maxfield Parrish
C. Coles Phillips
Willy Pogány
Howard Pyle
Arthur Rackham
Jim Steranko
J. Allen St. John
Alberto Vargas
Bernie Wrightson
N.C. Wyeth

8illustrationfan
Dic 23, 2008, 11:53 am

johnnyapollo.. you have a very impressive list (as do the others).. some of
my all time favorites

9illustrationfan
Dic 26, 2008, 1:52 am

I just uploaded some interesting Booth books with illustrations to my library and Booth database... check it out when you have time... More to come!

10jahn
Modificato: Gen 6, 2009, 2:17 pm

Seeing that all off you have left Robert Fawcett out of your lists makes me depressed and angry, he really should be presented with trumpet fanfares and tears of joy every time: he was the illustrators’ illustrator! Now, admittedly this is to some degree a matter of taste; but look him up at least if you do not know him: http://www.lorilovecraft.com/Fawcett.html

Here is a list of ten just reeled off, but deliberately with a European slant.: Robert Fawcett – Albert Brenet – Edouard Thöny - Noel Sickles – Jordi Longaron – Angel Badia Camps - Herbert Morton Stoops – Pino Dell’oco – Barye Phillips – Walter Gotschke.

By the way, I note from your lists that people here are as much into comics as illustration, so I thought I’d link to a site that might interest cartoons and comics fans with an appreciation of great drawing skills: http://www.coconino-world.com/
(I haven't checked out all the threads here, I'll come back and delete this posting if it is all superfluous)

11arthurfrayn
Modificato: Gen 6, 2009, 3:19 pm

Robert Fawcett fantastic draftsman no doubt, I just personally was never enamored with his use of color. But he could draw rings around most of his contemporaries -great sense of design as well!
Thanks for the link!

BTW, none of us have mentioned Coby Whitmore, Al Parker and Jon Whitcomb who are all great as well.

12jahn
Modificato: Gen 7, 2009, 5:05 am

Yes, a Fawcett illustration is of course a black and white drawing with some slight overlay of colour, as was quite natural in a time when most illustration work was in black, or greys, or was delivered with two originals, one for black and one for red-brown. The same can be said, with even more emphasis, for Noel Sickles. But they both could draw, and do so far beyond the balopticon tracing that was the optimum ability of a few illustrators mentioned here (?). What illustrator to give the large accolades for colour handling I do not know. Having been in the illustration business for forty years, and having often seen my careful greens, as an example, turn out purple, brown or yellow in print, I will excuse all old members of the profession for not caring that much about colour harmony.

One man that is not that often mentioned is Robert Abbett, his signature was sometimes hard to decipher and far from well placed. His William Burroughs covers are perhaps the best known examples of his work. He is now doing hunting and fishing paintings, in much the same style as his Tarzans, and is still quite good at making pictures: http://www.robertabbett.com/ A Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Abbett Which is not that usual, two Spaniards I have mentioned, Camps and Longaron, are now painting for private walls, but in my eyes they are far from being impressive in this. Here are some Longaron illustrations from his French Gerfaut days: http://bricabrac.perso.cegetel.net/longaron.html Even better was perhaps his Spanish work done earlier for Bestsellers de la Oeste. Well, at least as I see it, I liked his gouache work, working from dark to light, and I thought he went astray with the body-less watercolour that followed late in his Gerfaut days.
Speaking of illustrators turned painters, there is of course Howard Terpning, once doing romance for the ladies, as Whitmore and Parker, besides doing movie posters (Sound of Music, Sand Pebbles), now a Western painter (well, Indian painter really), I should have put him high on my list, but I forgot him. http://www.in70mm.com/news/2006/howard_terpning/index.htm
Books with his Indian paintings can be bought, I should have liked to see something published dealing with his commercial work.

13arthurfrayn
Modificato: Gen 7, 2009, 11:37 am

Fawcett was color blind. I had suspected that when I initially saw his work in art school years ago, before I found out that was actually the case. It even says so on the site you provided a link for. You can see it.
You can see it when Alex Toth uses color as well.

I like Noel Sickles. Big fan of Scorchy Smith.
I like the simplicity and boldness of his illustration work as well. Terrific designer.
There's a nice stash of illos on the David Apatoff blog I mentioned elsewhere in this group:

http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2006/08/ahhhhhhh-noel-sickles.html

Speaking of movie poster artists, another artist I forgot on my list of favorites is Reynold Brown, the king of horror movie posters:

http://www.americanartarchives.com/brown,reynold.htm

14dinoboy
Gen 7, 2009, 3:05 pm

Jahn, is the somewhere (a website?) we could see your work?

15Papiervisje
Gen 7, 2009, 3:31 pm

For me:
Joost Swarte
Ever Meulen
Yoshitaka Amano
Seth

16arthurfrayn
Gen 7, 2009, 10:16 pm

I only know Joost Swarte from his work in Raw, but I thought it was very attractive work.

It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken is one of my favorite graphic novels.

17jahn
Modificato: Gen 8, 2009, 2:13 pm

dinoboy
I haven't got a website. But I've hastily uploaded some of my marine painting, which is what I do now, to a site called Fotopic. Hope that works: http://galleryjan.fotopic.net On my profile page on this here site (Librarything) there's a small line drawing which I did as a series on perpetuum mobile contraptions sometime long ago, slightly more in the line of your work, as shown on your website (good stuff there!). I worked mostly for the advertising agencies as an illustrator, did much comp art work at the end.

18jahn
Modificato: Gen 8, 2009, 7:45 am

arthurfrayn
If you at all like Noel Sickles you should check out this book (read my review of it): http://www.librarything.com/work/6110852

I have some reprints of Steve Canyon strips with some Scorchy Smith at the back, the reproductions were bigger there, and I was therefore ever so slightly disappointed at the thinness of the lines in the Scorchy section of the book. But what you get in that book: all of Scorchy, and lots of illustrations, makes it really great value for the price.

19arthurfrayn
Gen 8, 2009, 8:52 am

Yes, I was reading about that Sickles book yesterday online-I knew the book was out, but didn't know it had the whole run of the SS strip. Going to pick it up soon!

20arthurfrayn
Gen 13, 2009, 12:42 pm

Well, I did pick up Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles and you're right, jahn, that's an astonishing book for the price.
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this illustrator!

21xjynx
Gen 13, 2009, 10:35 pm

This is my first post to LibraryThing -- but what a great topic! The top two are most relevant for me (I'm a medical illustrator) but it doesn't mean I haven't been inspired by the rest...

Radivoj Krstic (beautiful histological illustrations)
Jan van Calcar (De humani corporis fabrica woodcuts)
Edward Gorey
Aya Kato
Yoko Tanji
Kunie Kanbara
Tanaka Tatsuyuki
Yoshitaka Amano
Makoto Shinkai
Ai Yazawa
Amy Sol
Kay Neilsen
Edmund Dulac

22arthurfrayn
Modificato: Gen 14, 2009, 12:02 am

Hey, welcome to the LT forums and this one in particular.
I like Edmund Dulac as well!
Less familiar with the other folks you mention (apart from Gorey).

23illustrationfan
Gen 14, 2009, 1:21 am

Welcome to LT! and posting your comments!! Dulac and Kay Neilsen are awesome!!! Dulac kind of faded away into obscurity at the end of his life.. very similar to Willy Pogány....

24dinoboy
Gen 14, 2009, 2:12 am

Xjynk,
A friend recently introduced me to Tanaka Tatsuyuki's work in the book "Cannabis Works".
It's great stuff!
How about Koji Morimoto?
Or in a rougher vein, Katsuya Terada?

And to Jahn,
I checked out your gallery...
It's really crisp, bold, confident stuff ...but nice and subtle too...in all the right places.
I might have missed it if you mentioned it earlier, but who are some of the Marine artists you like?

25dinoboy
Gen 14, 2009, 2:30 am

Ok...Terada doesn't really fit...but I just wanted an excuse to mention him, since I like his work so much.

26jahn
Modificato: Gen 15, 2009, 9:28 am

Thanks Dinoboy, I might try to upload another gallery to that site with some of my illustration and comics stuff.
My favourite marine painters are Thomas Somerscales, a Brit who became something of a national painter in Chile, and Vilhelm Melbye, one of three Danish brothers all painting marines.

With Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen being mentioned here, I’ll have to suggest looking at another fairy-tale illustrator - beyond Arthur Rackham, (who I suppose you all know?), - namely Hermann Vogel. He was German and worked mostly for a magazine called Fliegende Blätter, but also illustrated the brothers Grimm’s and H. C. Andersen’s fairy tales. Regrettably he also illustrated the cliché “became a caricature of himself” in his later years, the work done in 1920 are far from the quality of what he did in 1900. The text of the blog in my second link below claims his work was influential in the Disney Studios.
I took a trip to Munich some twenty years ago to try out a new car and to search for some of his work; I walked around in the town for 3 days, and then stumbled upon a shop run by two girls selling nothing but German illustration work - could have cried for not saving up more money. But I got two lovely collections of his work.
I have not found anything on the net of what I consider his best illustrations, but these links may interest somebody; try the second one as the best collection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Vogel_(German_illustrator)

http://randzeichnungen.blogspot.com/2008/08/der-illustrator-hermann-vogel-und-se...

Early adventure tale illustrations: http://www.abenteuerroman.info/illu/vogel/21-05/gefai.htm

http://www.abenteuerroman.info/tafeln/31/31dat/03/070804d.htm

http://www.abenteuerroman.info/illu/vogel/31-03/070804i.htm

http://www.abenteuerroman.info/illu/vogel/15-02/010115i.htm

And a bit down on this page a few miscellaneous drawings, the upper middle of those shown (mermaids, or river nixes, and stone) an example of what I consider work from his best period:
http://www.stuartngbooks.com/importsvvv.html

27arthurfrayn
Gen 15, 2009, 10:22 am

Never seen Vogel before -beautiful, intently detailed work. Thanks for links!

28illustrationfan
Gen 15, 2009, 10:34 am

Interesting story Jahn... It would have been cool if you came upon some original art... I wonder were they could be... Thanks for sharing

A few more illustrators of that era:

W. Heath Robinson
Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market)
Alice Bolingbroke Woodward
Jessie Willcox Smith

29Powerslave214
Gen 20, 2009, 1:03 am

Charles Vess turned me on to the work of Hermann Vogel. I have a German language book of Vogel's work.

Which also reminds me, I need to find some John Bauer and Ivan Biliblin books as well.

30jahn
Modificato: Gen 20, 2009, 8:43 am

I have a volume on Bilibine, titled simply “Ivan Bilibine,” bought in Moscow and published in Leningrad in 1981 with the text by Serguei Golynets in French. (The publishers, Aurora, later became Parkstone Aurora situated partly in Bournemouth, and early on when carrying this British address published art books in English that were quite cheap. How much the Bournemouth address actually contained anything other than a financial loophole I don’t know, I searched for them on the net a few years ago – I hoped they had a catalogue - but they were not to be found, and they are still not.)

Personally I find the book illustrations by Bilibine in this book a bit too stiff, and too uniformly dark when coloured, but there are great number of pale yellowish paintings from the Crimea reproduced that are both lovely and slightly eerie, and they make the book a worthwhile acquisition for me.

There are a number of Bilibine's Ex Libris designs in the book, along with title page designs and designs for theatrical costumes and stage sets. There's a biography at the end with some 16 photos.

Googling “Golynets Ivan Bilibine” should give you a number of antiquarian booksellers that has the mentioned book on offer.

There are some Bilibine reproductions at the bottom of this Wikipedia entry:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Bilibine

Apropos John Bauer, on this site a number of Scandinavian fairy-tale illustrators are presented (I guess none of them have more mass appeal than Bauer, but there are some with a lot of naive charm, like Ivar Arosenius, who quite touches me without presenting any technical virtuosity): http://users.skynet.be/fa023784/trollmoon/TrollArtistsBlog/trollartistsblog.html