storytelling through pictures

I was shopping at Waterstones today and saw a tote bag they were selling with a drawing on it and I instantly recognised the style and I was thrown back in to a nostalgia trip of my first love of books and reading, I was so over joyed by the discovery and to own the tote bad was ow a necessity. The drawing is made by Quentin Blake, he used to draw all the Roald Dahl books and his writing was my first love and a part of that was Blake's drawings. So I started thinking about images in books and how much it can effect us as children and adults as well as I fully found out today. So, what artist has affected me the most, for me the answer is crystal clear.

Quentin Blake.
A master illustrator who has enriched many lives I am sure. I discovered him, as many did, through the magic worlds of Roald Dahl, I remember the first book I ever read by him was The Fantastic Mr Fox, I was about 8 and I was hooked in every way. After that I read everything Dahl ever wrote, borrowing his books from the library over and over again, and to this day, I just completely relish in his writin,  And Blake's drawings was a part of that, it brought everything to life as you imagined it in your head making the stories almost seemed real. For me he is by far the illustrator to book, which drawings I treasured the most.

 Hans Arnold.
A master illustrator for horror novels, and for me, being Swedish, he is extremely well known. In all major weekly magazines who had mystery or horror short stories in them, Arnold was most likely the illustrator. He made the most gruesome and morbid pictures of, monsters, murderers, ghost and thieves and I used to cut them out and hang them on my walls. Perhaps he didn't draw for classic children books but somehow for me he is very connected to my childhood and what I read, I probably was reading stories a bit more to the grown-up side. However, for me he will always be the artist who made me inspired to read in those magazines, he was actually the sole reason why I even looked in those magazines, a true artist.

Paul Kidby.
Well. If Roald Dahl represented my childhood and first love for books and reading, Terry Pratchett represents my early teens and the big doorway in to fantasy. I started reading Pratchett when I was around 12, I absolutely adored him and in our library in school they had quite a collection of his work so I was obviously hooked from the get-go. Paul Kidby illustrated all the covers to Pratchett's books and he did it, or does it brilliantly... the details, the humour, the references, everything is just perfect for the magic of Pratchett's world. I have a copy of 'The Last Hero' which is fully illustrated and more of a work of art than anything else. This is when I saw Rincewind, the luggage, Death, the chimpanzee and of course the Discworld in its full glory for the first time and I can not imagine a book from Pratchett now without seeing these characters brought to life by Kidby. He truly created something wonderful and even though Pratchett is a genius as an author Kidby's remarkable drawings pushes it to yet another level of greatness.


Another artist that must be on my list, and despite the fact he actually drew for comic books and not books or short stories I can not exclude him, fore he was such a big part of my childhood when it came to story telling and me being completely mesmerized by pictures, and that is 
Don Rosa.
Everyone who ever read Donald Duck must have seen his art, His style was quite different from other artists drawing Scrooge and his friends, and perhaps not everyone appreciate the meticulous work he put in to his pictures, for instance my mother did not like his style at all and preferred the more straight forward, clean style of Donald Duck that is for me typical Disney. However, I and I'm sure many others, looked forward to those attached complex stories of Scrooge and the rest out on adventures all over the world (and space) and I even cut everything out and put them up on my wall, Still have many of them and they still satisfy me enormously, because for the stories and art work it's more grown up and twisted than you would imagine be in a kids comic book. Nevertheless, I'm glad it did since it introduced me to Rosa's magnificent world which I can read and look at over and over again.