Portrait of an Illustrator

SIXTEEN OF THE BIGGEST TALENTS AT WORK TODAY

- EMILY GOSLING

Illustration is rarely a discipline that’s a discrete, individual package. It’s tied up in so many other fields that propel it far beyond old-fashioned stereotypes as simply something to adorn and decorate, or slap across editorial pages, packaging or brand campaigns. Many illustrators have arrived at the role through routes as diverse as ceramics, architecture, graphic design, filmmaking and animation, as this year’s Computer Arts Illustration Hotlist proves.

At its heart, illustration is about telling a story in a succinct image – no mean feat – and communicating something to the viewer through shapes, colours, character design and composition that words alone could never do. Sometimes this idea of storytelling and the importance of narrative is a crucial part of an illustrator’s work, such as those who make graphic novels like Anna Mill’s stunning Square Eyes or Anna Haifisch’s hilariously astute cartoon strip series The Artist. In other cases the sense of narrative is less obvious, yet all these illustrators’ work perfectly exemplifies the notion of being able to use an image to convey a thousand words.

By the very nature of such images being made by an individual, illustrations are often as much a reflection of their creator as of their subjects or narratives. As Sander Ettema puts it, who started out wanting to be a filmmaker, her work is almost like a diary – but one that enables her to create entirely original visual worlds that she’d once thought she’d be making through film. Similarly, Kieran Glennon’s illustration career started out, in a way, as a kid when messing about making daft depictions of friends and family members.