Category: Illustration

According to his bio, illustrator Greg Swearingen’s career started in junior high school when he was commissioned to draw a dragon for one dollar. Since then, his commissions have picked up somewhat and include clients like Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harcourt Brace, Harper Collins and Tor Books. He credits his teachers at the Columbus…

Russian painter, etcher and draftsman Ivan-Ivanovitch Shishkin was also a naturalist. He based his stunning landscapes of dense northern forests not only on careful observation, but on a deep understanding of nature and natural forms. Shishkin studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and then at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of…

Kam Mak is a Chinese-American illustrator whose web site has essentially no bio or text information on it at all. His images, however, speak eloquently. I was able to find some biographical information on the web sites of his publishers and a gallery. Mak was born in Hong Kong but grew up in New York’s…

Even within the illustration community, which is itself often dissed by the fine arts world, medical illustration, like botanical illustration and architectural rendering, just doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Good medical illustration, to my eye, can be as exciting and visually fascinating as the most far out science fiction illustration or movie concept art…

Shaun Tan is an Australian artist who creates and illustrates “picture books“, which in his case usually means wonderfully bizarre and imaginative flights of fancy that look, at least at first, like somewhat dark children’s fantasy, but are often aimed at both younger and older readers. He sometimes works with a writer, as in the…