Illustration by Dan Santat"Fantasy artist do more fantasy art books than they
do cute puppy books. Cute princess artists don't usually find themselves illustrating X-Men covers. It's because their work is more conducive to a certain market than
othersSo how does this relate to my style?
Well, for one, I stopped pursuing a style. I just painted what interested
me and I created things the way everything was perceived in my mind.
The problem at hand was that I wanted to illustrate children's books and so
my portfolio had to cater to that.
Form follows function.
I started from scratch. I just drew the way I drew things. I stopped
looking at other peoples work and denied my brain of any kind of inspiration. I
just sat down at my desk with a blank piece of illustration board and told
myself that I would make a brand new children's portfolio one piece at a time
and I wouldn't stop on any of the pieced until I was proud enough to hang each
one on my wall. I painted dogs, robots, kids, and all sorts of stuff that
children's book art directors would be looking for in a portfolio and best of all was that I loved painting all these things."
