Artists I Look Up To

A while ago, I saw some artists using this ‘influence map’ thing online to showcase some pieces from artists that they admire and had an impact on their work.

I created my own influence map some time ago, but thought it’d be good to post it here and maybe go a little more in depth on the artists I’ve named (and perhaps mention a few I ran out of room for/didn’t remember at the time).

So, here’s the list in an order of the influences I perceive as most significant to least significant.:

• Bruce Timm

  • Okay, full disclosure, this entry should really be the art teams that worked on the DC Animated Universe (DCAU) cartoons that aired from 1992-2006, but particularly Batman The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited. However, the DCAU is outright referred to be many as the Timmverse, and his style/direction is the basis of all the properties therein.

  • What I love about Timm’s work is the stylistic edge he brings t then, as well as their dynamism (both of which are obviously extremely important for animated cartoons). Timm’s flair for storytelling and communication through the comics medium is brilliantly captured not only in Batman Adventures: Mad Love, but moreover in his contribution ‘Two of a Kind’ to the anthology series Batman Black & White.

• Darwyn Cooke

  • Cooke is an artist whose work has seemed to have more of an effect on me as I’ve gotten older, and grown to appreciate more mature and esoteric mainstream comics. Like Timm, Cooke has a very expressive, blocky cartoon style (fitting as he worked extensively in the DCAU, particularly for the Batman Beyond cartoon). However, his superhero work primarily revolves around Golden Age/Silver Age topics - an era that despite their goofiness and wartime/post-war influences are arguable more timeless than any modern comics run. This is actually a major factor of Cooke’s work that I adore - his stories and art always seem timeless, despite their pop-art nature. For example, his work of DC: The New Frontier and Batman: Ego are relatively basic-seeming nostalgic superhero fictions, but both explore morality and cultural issues in a more explicit and thought provoking way than many other works.

  • Further, Cooke’s ability to create gloomy and shadowy settings while keeping characters recognisable are highlighting in his Richard Stark’s Parker adaptations and his initial run of Ed Brubaker’s Catwoman.

• Skottie Young

  • Young’s art on the Marvel Oz franchise of books was honestly some of the most influential on me. While I didn’t read the books when they were originally released, I remember my brothers reading them, and constantly saw them in book stores, comic shops and in Preview catalogues. I think what I love most about Young’s art is his erratic style, with a mix of clean lines and extremely off-kilter ones. Also, his characters exude fun, excitement and whimsy - making great use of diverse, strong silhouettes and endearing expressions.

• Akira Toriyama

  • I got into Dragon Ball Z at the age of 10. It was, quite stereotypically the first anime adaptation of a manga I ever watched as a Westerner (though I was actually introduced to the franchise through one of the PlayStation 2 video games). When I discovered the manga version, I read all of DBZ, loving the quicker pace employed by Toriyama (especially compared to the sluggish speed the anime went through at some points). Then, I went back and read the initial run Dragon Ball - a series that I actually enjoy more as a manga than DBZ.

  • The manga also made me learn to appreciate black-and-white comics more - I had always disliked reading black-and-white books when I was younger (more on that later), but DBZ really made me pay attention to shading, mark making and working with a limited colour scheme.

  • Toriyama is brilliant with his panel layouts and making the art within them effectively and clearly tell the audience what he wants them to know. The action, the character interactions, the tension - Toriyama is sensational in the way that he frames everything and still remains a massive influence on my work, even over a decade after I first laid eyes on it.

• Steve Ditko

  • Growing up, Spider-Man was my favourite comic character, and he probably still is. A major reason for that was the fact that he was probably the only comic character who I felt I could learn all the backstory for - unlike Batman (my other favourite), it felt like every Spider-Man story was important. While trying to learn all about Spider-Man’s history from the 1960s to the 2000s would be ridiculous, I felt aided by the fact that around that time Marvel released their Essential reprint line. This is the way in which I first encountered Steve Ditko’s work.

  • Growing up, I hated the Essential books. Sure, I’d re-read them again and again, but the paper was thin and coarse (at least with my copies) and I hated reading the black-and-white pages. Eventually, I would move onto Marvel Digest books that reprinted later issues in colour - and as much as I love them, I wish I paid more attention to the black-and-whites in the Essential books - as an adult, they’re probably the closest I’ll ever get to seeing Ditko’s original pages and honestly, other than Jack Kirby, Ditko is probably the comic artist who best exemplifies a mastery of the ‘basics’, alongside a massive amount of imaginative stuff.

  • The initial art in Ditko’s The Amazing Spider-Man run is something I considered (and still to some extent do) ugly - it wasn’t meant to be a romanticised genre comic like those featuring Batman and Superman, but rather a teenage power fantasy that left its hero in more-often-than-not unenviable positions. As such, Ditko’s initial scrawny, distorted art leant into that sense. Eventually, it would grow into somewhat more stereotypical superhero fare.

  • What I love about Ditko in particular is his storytelling and panel-to-panel flow. Most comic artists actually really struggle to keep my attention and keep me interested if there is some significant character interaction or fight scene. But Ditko was able to - the sequence below spans over 4 pages and features no fight scene, and only a inner monologue. Yet, Ditko uses varying panel size, repetition, and posing to make the scene as epic as possible.

• Patrick Gleason

  • Gleason is probably the artist whose work on this list I discovered most recently. I only began really seeing his work when I started reading his run with Peter Tomasi on Superman Rebirth. Again, I adore his characters and style. Everyone looks like more well-defined cartoon characters. Simply put, his heroes really look like heroes, and he always makes his layouts clear, intriguing and a joy to observe.

• Scott McCloud

  • I’d briefly like to say that I love Understanding Comics and Making Comics - they’re books that greatly influenced me when I started taking the medium more seriously and have served as a fundamental basis. I even managed to meet McCloud in 2015 at London’s Orbital Comics shop, alongside my brother. I managed to have a quick chat with him after a Q&A, where he offered some advice on breaking in. The reason I bring this event up though, was because it was a publicity event to promote his then new-graphic novel The Sculptor — which I didn’t pick up. I had my copy of Making signed, and I didn’t care for the look of The Sculptor. In my defence, I was a 15/16-year old with no disposable income, but thankfully my brother was gainfully employed at his point, and picked up a copy.

  • I wouldn’t read The Sculptor myself until 2018, at which point I was looking at various universities in England. It was the day that I finished The Sculptor that I saw Arts University Bournemouth - the uni that I would study Illustration at. As such, The Sculptor holds a special place in heart - for being a book by the first pro I met, and for being a book that I associate with one of my favourite places on this planet.

  • With that out of that way - my God, I love The Sculptor. Is it the best story ever told? No (but it’s still amazing). Is it the most beautiful book I’ve read? No (but it’s style is so striking and its use of monotone colours is something that has stuck with me). The reason I love The Sculptor is because it represents a goal to me - to be able to write a comic, with a story that’s personal to me - and to be able to just let it out into the world. It does help though, that it’s a book in which McCloud perfectly demonstrates many of the techniques he discussed in Understanding and Making.

• Quentin Blake

  • I’m British, and Quentin Blake is the only illustrator I remember as a child and could recognise his work instantly. His work is, like most of my favourites, cartoonish, but uses more scraggly lines and often times doesn’t worry much about detail. The use of colours and how he perfectly encapsulates scenes within the text is just unparalleled. While he isn’t the most significant influence on me, he definitely played a part in my understanding of what ‘illustration’ is.

• Andie Tong

  • For the longest time, I couldn’t tell you who Andie Tong was. And to be fair, I still don’t know much about him. What I can tell you is that as far as I’m concerned, he draws some of the coolest Spider-Man pages I’ve seen. While they aren’t as recognisable as many other artists, Tong’s work acts a basis for me regarding superhero fiction. His Spider-Man work (at least from what I know) was created for the European Panini-published Spectacular Spider-Man UK magazine that I read as a kid. I love how dynamic his work is, and perhaps more specifically I love his use of line-weight variation. Admittedly, a lot of my love for Tong’s work is derived from a sense of nostalgia, but it played a large part in my developing my interest in becoming an artist.

• H.A. & Margret Rey

  • Again, Curious George was something I read when I was little. Its soothing colours, warm textures and welcoming characters never fail to draw me. It’s deceptively simple, but I consider it unmatched as an illustrated children’s book series.

And here are a few other artists that I’ve found myself using for inspiration recently:

• Ryan Ottley (Invincible, The Amazing Spider-Man)

• Mark Bagley (Ultimate Spider-Man)

• Mark Crilley (Brody’s Ghost)

• Tim Levins (Batman: Gotham Adventures)

• Greg Capullo (Batman, DC Metal)

• Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist)

• Will Eisner (A Contract with God Trilogy)