Illustration Quotes

“I am Not, but the Universe is my Self.”
― Shih-t'ou

“There is no line between fine art and illustration; there is no high or low art; there is only art, and it comes in many forms.” (p. 12)”
― James Gurney, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (Volume 1)

“There are certain truths that occurs to us, which we cannot convey in words, but requires a personal experience to grasp more vividly.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“It was an irresistible development of modern illustration (so largely photographic) that borders should be abandoned and the "picture" end only with the paper. This method may be suitable for for photographs; but it is altogether inappropriate for the pictures that illustrate or are inspired by fairy-stories. An enchanted forest requires a margin, even an elaborate border. To print it coterminous with the page, like a "shot" of the Rockies in Picture Post, as if it were indeed a "snap" of fairyland or a "sketch by our artist on the spot", is a folly and an abuse.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories

“I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork. I don't want you to stop while you're reading one of my books and say, 'Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!' I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, 'This is a good book.”
― Chris Raschka

“In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the ground, that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end.

Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all—seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions; then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent.

Now it appears to us that what we have here, for illustration's sake, supposed to be done with the watch, is exactly what the establishment of Darwin's Theory will do for the organic world. For the notion that every organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become extinguished.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley, Criticism on "The Origin of Species"

“Before he got too far, he thought he smelled a fire.
No sooner did he blink before he sensed something dire.
He heard a sound and froze, danger tickling his nose.
His ears perked up as tiny cries of capture rose.”
― J.Z. Bingham, Isle of Mystery: Eyes of The King

“I had a dream about you last night. I was writing a ‘Sex for dummies-Christians That Secretly What to be Porn Stars- 1st edition.’ And you helped me with the illustrations.”
― Crystal Hudson, Dreaming is for lovers

“An imperfect creative expression is much more sensible and creative than a grammatically perfect expression without an iota of sense and value in it.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson