Whenever someone asks me about my favorite artist, I'm usually at a loss.
"Favorite artist at the moment" is a much better question, since it acknowledges that the target moves. It varies from week to week, dependent on what I'm working on.
If I'm trying to learn a new painting technique, it's probably a painter. If it's symmetry and detail, probably some methodical artist like Quitely or Charest. Digital art? Mckean, del Mundo, Huddleston. Comics is such an omnivorous medium that it can incorporate styles and techniques from across the entire spectrum of artists, so it really comes down to what the work is asking for at the moment.
When it's time, I obsess about this person or that one, mental deep-diving into their lives and process, devouring artworks and interviews and...you get it. It's a really fun process and allows me to get into the head of another creative person.
Right now, I'm trying to speed up my work, which usually leads to a Japanese artist of some sort. This week it's Yoshitaka Amano, of Speed Racer / Gatchaman / Final Fantasy fame:
I've been devouring his interviews and spotlights on YouTube, including his 45-minute Crunchyroll Expo feature, and I've ordered his illustrated biography, which just arrived last night.
It's a beautiful hardbound tome full of text (I prefer art books to have text; I need to read things) and it's quite comprehensive; tracing his career from when he was 15 years old and started working for Tatsunoko Productions in Tokyo to at least a few years ago, circa Final Fantasy XV.
Today, he's got multiple studios, assistants, a manager and probably more money than he knows how to handle, but it's interesting to see how the fundamentals of his success don't change: draw every day, don't overthink things, explore new imagery, lose yourself in the process, etcetera.
He's ridiculously fast and despite that, his work is quite robust, so I'm going to see if I can figure out what makes him tick, and maybe add that to my internal clockwork.
