1) Judy Love

She illustrated the best book I have ever read: The Treasure Tree. It was pure ink drawings with watercolor washes, and they were beyond dazzling. This is the art that made me want to become an artist. Nothing I've ever made has been able to compare to how beautiful I found her pictures when I was little. She made shiny things look SO DAMN SHINY! I still can't figure it out.

2) Clio Chiang

She's an artist I found around the interwebs years ago, and I just fell in love with the way she draws lines on figures. Everything is curvy and exaggerated and in constant motion. I study her drawings to get a grasp on how to make arms and legs stay believable while being distorted.

3) Jen Wang

Another internet find. Her comics are beautiful. Touch Food is by far my favorite, just because of how easily she makes it creepy. She is also a GOD at drawing fingers. If I ever draw a graceful lady, it is because I want to draw like Jen Wang. Her older stuff (IMO) is her better stuff.

4) Lucy Knisley

She's a comic artist (who actually went to school for it!) I found on the web. She has this clean, almost stiff way of drawing that I wish I could mimic. She's not one of those messy drawers (guilty); even her sketches come out looking tidy and easy to understand. Lucy's ability to draw environments in comics makes me so jealous!! It's something I'm always trying to pick up from reading her stuff.

5) Vera Brosgol

Hm, I'm sensing a pattern. Yet another artist from the internet! Vera does drawings of the absolute daintiest ladies and outfits. Her stuff is all really stylized and cutesy. Utterly adorable. She is why I love to draw pudgy girls and legs. (I really, seriously do not intend for that to sound creepy)

6) Kate Beaton!

My hero! After noticing she has found such fame with her hastily drawn comics and SPOT ON facial expressions, I got waayy more comfortable with my sloppy art. I always wanted to draw nice and clean (see #4), but that does not, unfortunately, come naturally. So besides the fact that Kate's comics are smart, witty, and have perfect comedic timing, I feel a bit of camaraderie in the style department! Messy comic artists, UNITE.

7) Gustav Klimt

A master, plain and simple. He's kind of a cross-over influence between my comic-artist side and my fine-artist side. His lines and stylization are always perfect. He can render the female form with barely any value changes or lines, but still retain a sense of realism. He's also who I look to for color advice. Orange, gold, purple and aqua? Klimt says "GET IT GURL"

8) Pauline Baynes

So I read a lot, and the Narnia series of books were my favvvvvvorites when I was younger. Mostly because of the pretty pictures. Even the little tiny doodles that were done of the nymphs or of Tumnus were lovely! She was a master with pen and ink, and I hold her in as high/higher regards as I do Aubrey Beardsley (yeah I said it).

9) Frank Cho

Liberty Meadows was the all time best comic in the newspapers. He could draw realistic women as well as that dumb pig and chimp and I loved him for it. The best strips were the ones that would have no storyline, just an intricately executed drawing (usually of a busty woman in some sort of flowing dress; typical) and the words "breaking in the new pens". For some reason, that was a source of inspiration. Go ahead and ruin your new pens if it's fun! Draw the things you like to draw, and draw them alot! You can never stop learning about technique!!!

10) Marissa Moss

Okay, if you were at one time a female child and read even one issue of the American Girl magazine, you know about Amelia's Notebooks. They were SO. COOL. If I hadn't given them back to the friend who loaned them to me, I would keep a stupidly tall stack of em in my room to read over and over and over. They were basically the illustrated diaries of "Amelia", a very typical 8-11 year old girl. But she drew in her diaries. So each page would be brimming with clumsy illustrations of the stories she was telling, or diagrams explaining her predicament of the week. They were brilliant. Most memorable page? Amelia "taped" a pot of lipgloss to one of the pages. The illustration was so well done that I would have given anything to have torn that lipgloss from the page and used it everyday. The illustrated journals I've kept for years are intentionally influenced by Amelia's Notebooks. Touche, Marissa Moss. TOUCHE.

11) Gary Larson

He so funny. I only appreciate my lardo of a cat because of Gary Larson, and I consider the Holy Grail of comic writing to be his one-panel captions. Cow Tools is the story of my life.

12) John Singer Sargent

Possibly my all time favorite artist?? YES MOST LIKELY. I don't know what to say except he's The Master. I hope my fine-art talent can one day exist somewhere in the same galaxy of Sargent's talent. (P.S. I consider him the biggest advocate for muted color palettes. So subtle! It's highly effective!!)

Weelllllllllllll that was my longest post ever! I hope there's a new artist on this list for you to look at :)