Illustration by Edward Gorey for the Gashleycrumb Tinies
I was thinking about the influences in our lives and how they subtly push us in specific directions and away from others. So I made a list of the illustrators who had influenced me, or, as I came to suspect, I was drawn to because their work resonated with me. After that initial interest, of course, their work further reinforced the part of me that was open to them from the start. Influence is a tricky thing that way. We are pulled to something through our own interest in it as well as its own inherent pull, in the way that compatible magnets work on each other. The expression “drawn to” is revealing in itself: We are drawn in as we are redrawn, remade in our own image but even more so.
So here is who draws me in:
1. Charles Schulz. Not just his big-headed characters but their loneliness and powerlessness which come through as much from the words as the sparse landscapes and simple lines.
Peanuts comic by Charles Schulz
2. Edward Gorey and Gustave Doré for their faithfulness to and, in fact, fascination with danger, especially of childhood.
Gustav Dore's illustration for Little Red Riding Hood, Les Contes de Perrault, 1867.
3. Garth Williams for his rich characterization achieved often through simple line drawings.
Garth Williams's illustration for Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
