Cassandra Rhodin is a Swedish fashion illustrator whose watercolors have a lot of energy and movement. She gives a mysterious atmosphere to their characters. Using watercolors and a monochromatic pallet help to reach that atmosphere. She has very strong style, she draws and uses watercolor to create these amazing "wide eyed" characters. What i like the most of her work is the importance she gives to line.

Taking into account i love kids illustrations, i wanted to show one more time, Jessie Willcox Smith´s work.

Jessie Willcox Smith was born in Philadelphia, USA in 1863. The first art school she attended was the School of Design for Women in Philadelphia (later Moore College of Art) but after a while she transfered to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She did not completely develope her own style until she started to study with Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in 1894.

She published her illustrations in different magazines like St. Nicholas, Ladies Home Journal, Scribner or Harper. Also, she worked for "Good Housekeeping" magazine illustrating its covers showing american daily home life scenes, specially painting mothers taking care of their babies or paintings of innocent children.

Jessie Willcox Smith became popular not only publishing her illustrations in different magazines, but also illustrating children´s books, and eventually painting portraits.

The really like how she mix some outlines with flat shapes. Another recognizable characteristic of her work is that she draws the focal point or the main figure in the center of the composition. Also, eventhough she used a lit of different colors, they were not very bright, keeping all the palette in the same brighness.

Baiba Ladiga is a fashion illustrator. She has been working in fashion design since she graduated with a Master of Arts in Fashion design in Shangai, China. Her work is quite femenine, she draws pretty much women. The colors she add are bright, and the illustrations a bit chaotic and spontaneous, you can tell it because of the gesture and the line expression.
She uses different medium for her drawings, China ink, watercolors, markers, pens and pencils and collage.

Alejandra Fernandez is an illustrator and freelance graphic designer from Madrid, Spain. After she graduated in Publicity and working in different agencies, she realized that what she liked the most was drawing so she started to draw more and more and ended up working as an illustration (her passion) and graphic design that pay the she bills. Also she have made other designs for clothes and accessories

Her style is very naif but with a lot of energy and texture that make it very strong. The proportions she used to create the characters is not very realistic but still is credible. Also she emphasize her drawings using a contour line that vary in thickness and make the illustrations even better. I really like how she mixes texture and line in the same illustration. She makes both, children and adult illustrations.

Also I have to say that her website is pretty good, dynamic and clean.

Nesk is a self-taught french graphic designer who works now as an illustrator and freelancer. His inspirations are very different, He likes the retro style of the years 50/60 and different artists of the movement Surealism Pop. HeI loves the humor, poetry, and illustrations that tell stories. And that you can also see it in his work. His illustration appears in many diverse mediums such as books, magazines, t-shirts

Here is his website, were you can check more of his work. In his portfolio website he has different sections were his work is divided such as characters, logos, but i wanted to be focus in the humorous section pretty much. He has a great color palette control.
The illustrations are characterized by using flat color, he doesn't use line at all as a expression way and they can be either very complex with a lot of different elements as you can see in his first illustrations or very simple. Under my point of view, the simple ones are more interesting because of his sense of humor and also because there are no many elements involved, he leads the viewer´s eyes directly to the main character.

Chris Leavens

Chris Leavens is an american Illustrator from Pennsylvania who was graduated with a BA in film and video from Penn State University. After being working for a while editing videos he took a break from the film field and start as an illustrator, graphic designer and web designer, focusing primarily on educational material for children. He still works as illustrator.

Chris illustrations are focused on vector art which is produced in Illustrator. His characters are characterized because of being bizarre ans surrealistic as well as being made by very simple shapes. His illustrations can have either a lot of bright colors or just dull colors and monochrome images, but in general they are a mixed of both and a mix of cool and warm colors to create depth.

Mucha is one of the artists i have always admired since long time ago. The palette color he used, the organic shapes and the importance he gave to the line made me admire his artwork.
In this link, you can check part of Mucha´s artwork

Gordana Ivkovic is a great children illustrator. It is great how she uses the exaggeration of forms and perspectives to create her figures and make them be more visually attractive and dynamic while giving them her personal touch. I really like her interpretation and distortion of the figures, but still making them being understood as what they are, either humans, animals or other kind of figures.. Also with the use of color and the texture she gives to the illustrations as if the figures were in a dream is what make me be interesting to her work

Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo. LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone, as it is written in Wikipedia. The Cat in the Hat is his most famous book.
The use of line in all of his illustrations is very important which with it he creates a little bit of depth in each character, creating shadows. Also, the use of bright and flat colors and flat backgrounds predominating the composition plus the personal character the illustrator put on them, always under the same visual style, make this illustrations have their own personality and that is showed to the public. The happy faces of the characters make them very attractive for kids.

I'm very attracted to child books because of how line is used and the colors and the fantasy atmosphere that is in them. Also, I like that the bodies, the objects and everything else are not drawn extremely real, with real proportions which gives that atmosphere of a dream that i like.

Web site: http://www.seussville.com/

Robert Ryan

This is the website of Robert Ryan: http://www.misterrob.co.uk/



Robert Ryan is a designer/illustrator from UK that started working in printmaking, screenprinting and painting and whose whose more recent work consist pretty much in cut out of paper making illustrations and patterns with it.

His illustrations have a modern style and what it is very impressive is how much detail they he add in each illustration being just made by cutting and removing paper. His work is simply amazing!!
Even though he add much detail into the cutting, the figures are just silhouettes and the illustrations have a minimalist feeling that appeal to me (minimal forms, minimal color). Also I like the rough edges and homemade feeling his illustrations have.

He has worked for many clients, such as Vogue, Paul Smith, LG Electronics, Quicksilver, Mute Records and Liberty’s of London.

(Some of the images i show are screen printings)

More images

This are some examples of illustrated books as well as different illustration styles