Contemporaries

During the eighties, I was mostly ignorant of contemporary illustration unless it happened to cross my personal radar. Once I started thinking of joining the ranks of working illustrators, it became a little more imperative that I start taking a look around me to see what else has been happening in the industry in the past decade. I started looking through the illustration annuals, and started noticing the works of artists in magazines a bit more diligently, and several became personal favorites of mine, and, are who I consider the giants among my contemporaries.

Gregory Manchess, Anita Kunz, Gary Kelly, C.F. Payne, Gary Baseman, Mark Ryden, Mark Summers, David Levine, Peter De Séve, Carter Goodrich, Henrik Drescher, Malcolm Liepke, Elwood Smith


And of course, head and shoulders above them all, and one of the few contemporary illustrators that I can say that I honestly don't remember a time when I wasn't aware of his work, is Brad Holland. I've long been a fan of his color paintings, and black and white line art, and always look forward to seeing new work of his in the annuals. I'm certain that his dense crosshatching influenced a lot of my early work, and many of my early experiments in painting as a optional style.