Neal Adams Quotes

Because even very young people are expert readers of pictures, you can convey very complex and subtle messages through pictures that you'd need loads of words to explain. Making a picture book is also a bit like making your own film - and you can make anything you want happen, however impossible!

I always knew I wanted it to be illustrated.

Alejandro Colucci has designed covers for my books that stand out, that catch the eye, and that make me, as a reader and consumer, want to know more about the books behind those covers.

My drawing skills probably froze around when I was 18... Now I'm more interested in the story, how the drawings, the layout can help express the stories and communicate them.

Each book requires a different look. Sometimes I get to take a personal direction that's appropriate for the story. I try to push things within a range. Some are rougher, some more expressionistic, some are slicker graphically and call for a prettier drawing style that I can do. Some have a more classical vibe, and some are in between.

I want to make books. I want to take pictures and then write all over the pictures. And then I don't have to say a complete story, because I have the picture, and I have just a word.

I love illustrating for other writers because I am given stories I never would have thought of, and my work as an illustrator is always in support of the story.

Wherever there are words, let there be pictures.

I'm interested in illustration in all its forms. Not only in books for children but in posters, prints and performance as a way of drawing people into books and stories.

My overall artistic goal is to marry graphic design with comic books and traditional storytelling.

Illustrations can be a big window: a looking glass into the author's imagination.

If it's just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn't much of a picture book, is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself.

Whatever I'm thinking about has got to fit into thirty-two pages, the standard picture book size. So that's something. But the structure and the form for me are almost the most important, because these will express as much as words and images will the content of the work.

When you make illustrations, you're supposed to have a subtext; you're not just communicating words - you're actually adding another story altogether.

The text illustrates the pictures - it provides a connective tissue for me. I usually refine the text last, partly because pictures are harder to do, so it's easier to edit words - I use text as grout in between the tiles of the pictures.

I've spoken before on how the art of storytelling has been lost a bit. I definitely feel 'Empire' is helping to reprogram us back to that place where we pay attention and invest emotionally in the records and the artists.

I like looking at a book and asking myself, 'How do I replicate that experience I just had as a reader?'

I've always liked writing. Even when I was in art school and thought I was going to be a gallery painter, I liked to pair my artwork with writing. And so that naturally led to drawing comics.

Telling stories with visuals is an ancient art. We've been drawing pictures on cave walls for centuries. It's like what they say about the perfect picture book. The art and the text stand alone, but together, they create something even better. Kids who need to can grab onto those graphic elements and find their way into the story.

A good picture book can almost be whistled. ... All have their own melodies behind the storytelling.

I used to do jacket design, and I'm very conscious of covers, and probably meddle more than other authors would.

Packaging can be theater, it can create a story

I'm interested in storytelling. I love being an artist now and connecting through art.

Sometimes I think I prefer the storyteller in [Roman Vishniac] to the photographer. But aren't they one and the same?

I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people.