Featured Illustrator

We’re delighted to feature Ryan Middaugh this month. His illustrations blend digital finishing with traditional artwork, photography, and even printing, and he has a gift for making science fun, from fossils to dinosaurs and mammoths. He draws inspiration from art museums and picture books, and it shows in his linework and approach to color.

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How did you get started in illustration?

I’ve been drawing since I was small but decided to get a degree in Illustration from the University of Central Missouri. I couldn’t ever imagine doing anything else. My college actually has the longest-running Children’s Literature Festival in the United States.

What is your background?

I grew up in the Kansas City area but have lived in Oregon for many years. I have worked in printing (in one form or another) for my entire career as well as working as a professional illustrator.

I signed with my fantastic agent, Christie Megill from The Cat Agency, about four years ago. Recently, I have been working on a couple of picture book projects and an upcoming gallery show.

What have you learned along the way? What tips can you share?

It’s important to keep practicing and growing. The way we work is always going to change. It’s fun to go back and look at those changes but not view them as necessarily worse or better, just different.

What is your preferred medium and method of working?

For books, I usually finish a drawing digitally, but I include traditional artwork, photography, and even printing in my digital pieces. Working digitally makes revisions a lot easier.

How did your style and technique develop?

If you are trying to figure out your style, give yourself a very short deadline to complete a difficult project and see what you default to. What shows up on the page is your current style.

I love to go to art museums and read picture books just to absorb many different methods and solutions to visual problems. It comes out as something uniquely my own.

What do you do when you get stuck or lose motivation to ‘get back’ to what you’re working on?

I ride my bicycle or take a walk. Both can be very meditative and good conduits for ideas.

What would be your dream project?

I enjoy working on fun projects that teach science at the same time. I just illustrated a book called “So, You Want to Be a Fossil” by Anna Monders (Published by MIT Kids Press / Candlewick, 2027). I will always accept any opportunity to draw dinosaurs and mammoths.

I would also love to do a scary graphic novel.

What illustrators inspire you? Why?

Some of my favorites are Charley Harper, Andy Warhol (his Inkblot drawings are amazing), Evaline Ness, Julie Morstad, Miroslav Sasek, Emily Carroll, Isabelle Arsenault, Elizabeth Haidle. I have a long list. I love their linework and approach to color.

Visit our past Featured Illustrators by clicking the member cards below.