Edward Ardizzone (1900 - 1979) was a hugely well known and successful illustrator and writer. This gives a good rundown of his life and publishing career, I particularly liked the bit where he was arrested as a spy during the Second World War for sketching in the East End. For a more in depth overview of his work as a war artist I enjoyed reading this from the Imperial War Museum. This is a really interesting article from a talk by Ardizzone about what makes a true illustrator as opposed to artists of different types. I particularly enjoyed reading about the key skills he felt make up an illustrator, especially "the power to draw away from life", an inventiveness in the way a writer is inventive and a creation of complementary worlds. While talking about this he reveals a danger of it, although doesn't explicitly recognise it as such, he talks of a Cruikshank drawing of Fagin as not being what anyone looks like but what the "popular conception of a frightened old Jew should look like." This ability to key drawings into people's conceptions and from that bring their understanding to the story is powerful but carries the risk of amplifying and perpetuating harmful negative stereotypes. In another section Ardizzone shows an awareness of this need to subvert, talking about how good illustration serves to provide "a visual counterpart which adds a third dimension to the book" Ardizzone's belief in the importance of the power to draw away from life leads him to state that experimental doodling was probably the most important factor in his development as an illustrator.

This quote from Ardizzone's daughter, Christianna paints a portrait of someone in love with and at home when drawing:

“My father drew all the time. He drew at his desk all day, seated on his dais in the studio window, intent upon his work while family life, which was mostly lived in that large room, went noisily on around him; and he drew in the evenings and even during meals on any scrap of paper which came to hand. Cigarette packets, shopping lists, the covers of Penguin books, the long calculations with which he amused himself on the rare occasions when he wasn't either drawing or reading, were all embellished with fantastical doodles and with little sketches, perhaps to clarify the answer to a question, or to expand upon something he was telling us. For him drawing was the most precise and eloquent means of communication."