My favorite illustrators

Illustration is such a beautiful type of art:  a drawing or painting usually portraying an image or concept. 


It can be fine art, and also have illustrative expression.
There's so many illustration techniques now. From classic hand and pencil drawings to digital tablet drawings. 
Most artists combine both: starting with a pencil line drawing, scanning it and then using illustration software to fill in the color and detail.


There are many categories including manga, abstract, fashion, collage and more. 
Here are some of my favorite artists


Yellena
One of my favorite abstract artists.
Most of her work is ambiguous flowing shapes, but some of them resemble sea life and plants.
Her more recent work is even more layered with lots of beautiful transparencies and colors. Here's a link to her blog.


Audrey Kawasaki


She is a figure illustrator. Her characters are almost always female very delicate with very subtle flesh tones. Mostly young but with a very adult gaze. She likes to play with dichotomies: youth and death, beauty and ugliness, etc.

For more about here work, 

click here.

Emily Black Apple Windfield Martin

I really like the way she paints her characters: very simple and naive (not the painting style, but the subjects) and how she incorporates story-telling into the subject.

She became really know from her series of Snow White style characters and paintings with black apples and from there her career took off.

She has an amazing blog and a community of followers who always like to read her stories. She's also very fond of making and wearing fabulous retro clothes.

Many of these artist have welcomed technology into their careers and make a lot of their living through online sales in places like ETSY. Usually selling prints, posters and postcards of their artwork.

Of course, they also have plenty of gallery shows and even features in various books.

Are you wanting to become an illustrator?

Look at these easy scholarships to apply for.

Monster Creator: Jon Burgerman

One of my favorite cartoonist and monster creators is Jon Burgerman.

I've seen his career develop from very basic black line drawings to this newer more contemporary aesthetic that still conveys the essence and fun of his style.

http://jonburgerman.com/

He is an artist, graphic designer and illustrator who always makes colorful funny and sort of ambiguous creatures with floating limbs and 'loopy' eyes.

All of his creatures have a certain personality.  Like the speech bubbles talking to each other, the guy who looks like he's playing tennis but had too much sun. Or a go-go dancer with very large limbs.

He finds inspiration from the every day and he can't really predict when he'll be receiving his next idea.

He also enjoys the spontaneity of work and rarely sketches any material before starting, as stated in his website's FAQ.

Mr. Burgerman works in many kinds of media: murals, illustrations, paintings, marker doodles and even custom-painting cars, shoes and more.

I noticed that in the last 2-3 years, his characters have become even more ambiguous than before but he still also "sneaks-in" a very clearly identifiable character here and there.He experiments with the use of only 3 colors or so and I think that his mural work is very successful and much more refined.

 Larger scale can always help an artist improve in areas that were not so obvious before.

I'm also enjoying the modern Picasso-like portraits he's making:

http://jonburgerman.com/work/tired-of-being-wired

Sometimes, I can't help but wonder what's his all-time favorite character  Could it be the signature burger?

Who knows..... I just now I enjoy his monsters the best.


He is currently experimenting in the music field and some of his music and videos can be found on youtube.

Do you ever wonder how to become a Graphic Designer like Jon Burgerman?