What is Illustration? Part 2: Aesthetic

Here are five illustrators I feel have a cool aesthetic quality to their work:

Chris Samnee
Chris Samnee is a comic book illustrator whose work I love. He draws comics with strong bold lines and classic comic quality to them. He currently draws Daredevil, which is largely the reason its my favourite comic book at the moment.

Jack Teagle
Teagle's work stands out to me because of how basic it is. He doesn't work with intricate illustrations, however he makes very sound compositional pieces.

Kristyna Baczinski
I love Kristyna's style. Her work has such a fluid, yet static feel to it. She also has a great understanding of colour which is something I really need to get my head around…

Skottie Young
Young is well known by comic enthusiasts for creating variety covers of Marvel comics however he also illustrates children's books. He has a zany drawing skill and over exaggerates his characters to the extreme.

Bryan Lee O'Malley
Perhaps best known for the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, what I like about O'Malley is his ability to infuse asian influences into a western culture. His line work is broad and powerful and with the Scott Pilgrim Novels he stayed away from colour only using black, white, grey and halftone.

What is Illustration? Part 2: Process / Media

Here are 5 artists that I feel have an engaging process or work with an interesting media:

Mark Hearld
I've only recently came across the work by Mark Herald. He seems to have a range of processes from lithograph to 3D craft.

Rachael Ryle
Rachael Ryle has become Instagram famous for her stop motion videos that range from holiday well wishing to random day to day tacks. Very interesting, but I don't feel I have the patience to create such work.



Stephan Wiltshire
Wiltshire is an amazing person who suffers from autism. He has an amazing ability where after being flown across a cityscape he can draw the entire city from memory. This is a fantastic and unusual process.

Francis Manapul
Manapul is one of my favourite comic book illustrators. He creates his work using watercolour which is quite unusual as most comic book artists just pencil and ink work before going digitally. Its that extra bit of effort that makes his work stand out.

Phillipa Rice 
Phillipa Rice has two distinctively interesting styles one in which she uses to create her zine 'Soppy'. She uses just inks but her illustrations within Soppy consist of just the colours Red, White and Black. Her there process is 3D stop motion using knitted characters. I feel this are fantastic, although I have no intention of creating such intricate pieces.

What is Illustration? Part 2: Practitioners

Here are five illustrators whose work is mostly generated for agencies or client;

Adrian Tomine
From his New York Drawings book which were originally made for the New York Times Magazine, I really enjoy Tomine's work. He has a great understanding of composition and colour which I greatly admire. 

Eleni Kalorkoti 
Kalorkoti is an Illustrator who creates client based work predominantly, although she does create self published work also. She seems to be very aware of shape and manipulates it to create very evocative imagery.

Noma Bar
Although considered a graphic artist, Noma Bar's work still displays much use of illustration. Working for the agency Dutch Uncle, Bar makes pieces for clients by expertly using shape and space, often playing on people's preconceptions to fill the empty space within his work.

Lyndon Hayes
I think Hayes illustrations, with their incomplete feel and loose line work, are amazing. Again, working with the Dutch Uncle agency, Hayes has created work for clients such as Esquire, FHM and Time magazine.

Shout
Real name Alessandro Gottardo also works with Dutch Uncle and has created pieces for Modern Library publishers among others, however most of his work is created for exhibition use. Gottardo's work is very reliant on space and he expertly uses compositional elements such as layering to create depth, and positions elements to be the main focal point of an image.