Reading about Queen Victoria has been a passion of mine since, as a child, I came across Laurence Housman's play 'Happy and Glorious,' with its Ernest Shepard illustrations.
In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration.
I didn't go to school for illustration. I did larger pieces, mostly drawings and paintings, and minored in video, but when I moved to N.Y.C., I didn't have a studio space anymore and downsized to my desk and started illustrating. I started a greeting card company and sold cards all over the city.
My favourite books series as a young child was the Frank L. Baum 'Wizard of Oz' series. They were beautifully written, oversized fat books with wonderful type and illustrations.
For much of America, the all-American values depicted in Norman Rockwell's classic illustrations are idealistic. For those of us from Vermont, they're realistic. That's what we do.
There have been many different artists that have been inspirational. I suppose the question is directed to what was the reason why I went into fantasy illustration.
I majored in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, although I never had any intention of being an illustrator and didn't take any classes in illustration there. It was just that the illustration degree had no requirements.
I think there's art, and then there's illustration. Art comes from a deeper place.
Illustration is commercial. It's work that we produce, and I think what you can do is you can draw from the pool of art, but most of it comes from a pool of knowledge.
An illustration is a visual editorial - it's just as nuanced. Everything that goes into it is a call you make: every color, every line weight, every angle.
