Smashing Magazine
Beautiful Illustrator Artworks By Artists Around The World
Adobe Illustrator is a powerful software for illustrating that allows users to produce beautiful artwork, technical illustrations, and even graphics for both print and the web. Adobe Illustrator is a multipurpose vector illustration tool and its versatility makes it the most preferred choice among many professional artists and designers.
In the past, we’ve published a collection of Beautiful Photoshop Illustrations By Artists Around The World, and this is the latest post that will showcase the power of Adobe Illustrator. We present here hundreds of brilliant illustrations by artists from around the world that will surely mesmerize you and stir your imagination. Have a look, and feel the power of Illustrator!
We recognize that there are many more highly-talented illustrators that may not be mentioned here. We can’t cover them all, but with your help we can try to showcase them in future posts. Please feel free to comment on this article and mention the name of your favorite artist.
[By the way, did you know we have a free Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks in your inbox!]
Tom Whalen
Tom Whalen lives in McAdoo, a town in northeastern Pennsylvania, USA. He is a gifted and zealous designer come illustrator and he has skillfully amalgamated his passion in his idiosyncratically-designed posters.
Raiders of the lost ark poster
Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee is a multi-disciplinary designer and illustrator of sorts, born in Sacramento, California. He is a graduate from Sacramento State University and his formal education is in graphic design. His entire life, however, has revolved around drawing since he was old enough to hold a pencil.
Julian Dorado
Julian Dorado is an Argentina based illustrator and graphic designer who creates unique characters, cute animals, wild monsters, and various other font-inspired characters.
Chris Leavens
Chris Leavens was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He breezed through school and spent a good deal of time doodling, drawing robots, spaceships, and bizarre creatures. Currently, Chris is focusing on creating vector art using Adobe Illustrator. He produces most of his artwork — from start to finish — entirely in Illustrator, including textural elements. His work incorporates absurdity, anthropomorphisms, and a healthy dose of humor.
Zutto
Zutto is a Russian-based digital illustrator, artist and character designer, with a very unique style. Her illustrations are dreamy and full of vibrant colors and fantasy characters.
Matthew Skiff
Matthew Skiff is a vector illustrator living in Colorado. He is a well-known and trained graphic designer who has the ability to combine his graphic and illustration skills to create wonderful artwork. He makes illustrations for bands and creates professional t-shirt designs.
Yiying Lu
Yiying Lu is one of the most promising designers of Sydney, Australia. She was born in Shanghai, China, and is a confident artist with many attractive designs and illustrations in her portfolio. She runs her own design studio & teaches design at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her dream job is to furnish visual refreshment to the current Google logo.
Yukio Miyamoto
Yukio Miyamoto has been using and abusing Adobe Illustrator since the beginning of time (well, since the late ’80s at least). His artwork is showcased and sampled in a number of design books and he has trained thousands of people in all areas of graphics for both Mac and Windows. You won’t believe your eyes when you see Yukio’s work.
Nick La
Nick La is a freelance illustrator and web designer from Toronto. He is a well-known designer who has founded a number of projects including N.Design Studio, the popular blog Web Designer Wall, Design Jobs on the Wall, and Best Web Gallery. He has recently launched a new website called IconDock that’s completely dedicated to icons.
Helen Huang
Helen Huang is an illustrator born and raised in China and currently living in Los Angeles. She has a passion for illustration and is currently working as a full-time designer for an interactive ad agency.
Michael Heald
Micheal Heald is a passionate designer and diverse creative professional from the UK. His true passion and innovative outlet is his award-winning design studio Fully Illustrated where he offers creative services that include designing, branding, illustration, and 3-D motion graphics.
Susanne Paschke
Susanne Paschke is a German freelance designer and illustrator. Her passion is to accept the challenge of making something emotional out of digital vectors. She uses path tools and simple color selections to create photo-realistic illustrations.
Jonathan Ball
Jonathan Ball is an illustrator and designer from Cardiff, UK who has immersed himself in a number of creative fields. He is well-known for creating idiosyncratic and skillful artwork that’s regularly infused with original characters.
Ryan Putnam, aka Rype
Ryan Putnam is an illustrative designer living in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He runs Vectips, a blog dedicated to vector illustrations and he does client work under Rype Arts. He is an outstanding illustrator who has been drawing and doodling his whole life and received a graduation degree in fine arts with a concentration on graphic design from Colorado State University.
Rubens Cantuni
Rubens Cantuni is an Italian designer with a degree in industrial design currently working as an art director and supplementing his income with freelance illustration. He is truly passionate about his creative work and wants to make a full-time living from illustration in the future.
Sascha Preuß
Sascha Preuß is a German Illustrator who is working as a freelance Illustrator under the name Bubblefriends. He is known for creating cute characters and colorful vector illustrations.
Jeff Finley
Jeff Finley is an illustrator based in Cleveland, Ohio. He is co-owner of Go Media, a creative agency headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio and is an entrepreneur that specializes in illustration, graphic design, and 3-D.
Halim Ghodbane
Halim Ghodbane is an amazing illustrator based in Algeria. You won’t believe your eyes when you see his work.
Rod Hunt
Rod Hunt is a London-based Illustrator and artist who has built a reputation for retro-tinged Illustrations and detailed character-filled landscapes for UK and international clients spanning publishing, design, advertising, and new media, and covering everything from book covers to advertising campaigns, theme park maps, and even the odd large-scale installation too! Rod is also the artist behind the best selling Top Gear book “Where’s Stig?” published by BBC Books.
Aquil Akhter is a web graphic designer and has been working in this field for 8 years. He also runs the blog webdesigncore.com, which focuses on free web resources and inspiration for designers and developers.
- 85 Comments
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March 4th, 2010 3:35 amWAW!! Very cooool!!! Some amazing work!!
- 3March 4th, 2010 3:45 am
Wow. Great collection of amazing works!
Keep it up, I’m wanting more… - 4March 4th, 2010 3:50 am
Nice works!! enjoyed it alot
- 5March 4th, 2010 3:53 am
Great collection, very inspiring… thanks…
- 6March 4th, 2010 3:54 am
Big fan of michael Healds work. :) Great in-depth and exhaustive roundup.
- 7March 4th, 2010 4:33 am
“Halim Ghodbane” is a monster of illustrator
- 8March 4th, 2010 4:37 am
I like all of these but for me, the photorealistic works if genuinely created purely in AI are just outstanding.
Yukio Miyamoto’s french horn is incredible and Halim Ghodbane’s ‘Losha’ – I think I dated her once or that could be wishful thinking !
In the abstract side, Michael Heald’s characters are excellent and I don’t think I’d like to be on the sidewalk if Rubens Cantuni’s ‘Urban Attitude’ lady got a chill! – Nasty.
Thanks so much for sharing these, they are all inspriational.
- 9March 4th, 2010 4:47 am
wonderful! thanks for the enjoyable post!
- 10March 4th, 2010 4:47 am
Great work! Sad reality that I’m not talented :-(
- 11March 4th, 2010 4:48 am
Great collection. Thanks! Jonathan Ball is a great illustrator that has inspired my work quite a lot recently. Great use of depth. Some of the detailed ones are great too.
- 12March 4th, 2010 5:12 am
Thanks for a fantastic collection! I love the illustrator works of “Aya”, to be found on Behance. Just a tip for you guys :) Happy weekend everyone<3
- 13March 4th, 2010 5:36 am
Really like most of these. So much talent.
I only have one thought. What is the purpose of drawing a car that is exactly like a photography ? I mean exactly. Some are realistic but they stand out because the drawing adds something. The citroen C6 could have just been a photo.
Great talent doing it but drawing it doesn’t add anything.
In any case, all great illustrators!- 14March 4th, 2010 2:07 pm
@Alain: Easiest explanation for wanting to make a photo realistic drawing (ie. of a car) is when the actual product doesn’t exist for a photo to be taken. Drawing an existing car is proof that you can achieve photo realistic results for that sort of product.
- 15March 4th, 2010 6:16 pm
*If* he created it without a photo. But I think the photo realistic stuff was just tracing, I found it the least interesting of the lot. But if you need a photo to create something that detailed, then it seems pointless to me.
- 16March 7th, 2010 11:00 pm
Maybe it will be used for building size printing, in case we don’t have affordable camera :p (vector power!!)
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- 17March 4th, 2010 5:45 am
These are just awesome! They are all awesome in their own unique way. Great stuff!
- 18March 4th, 2010 5:45 am
Thanks for including my work Aquil. Great collection, love Zutto’s work.
- 19March 4th, 2010 5:57 am
Great different styles I love it!
- 20March 4th, 2010 6:43 am
Great selection of work there. Thanks for featuring my illustration, glad I can inspire others.
cheers
jon
- 21March 4th, 2010 7:04 am
I honestly never cared much for the Illustrator “look”. I use it every day for my job, but I rarely create “art” with it. It’s too much work for too little gain. Especially since Adobe treats the program like a red-headed stepchild.
Frankly, everyone’s art EXCEPT Yukio Miyamoto’s stuff looks the same.
I think the vector style is fairly played-out, but Yukio took it to another level. His stuff is amazing. If I could make art like that in Illustrator I’d do it every day.
- 22March 4th, 2010 12:53 pm
You must not have seen Skiff & Finley on the list.
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- 23March 4th, 2010 7:11 am
Great collection! Thanks for featuring my artwork.
- 24March 4th, 2010 7:19 am
Becoming a fans of Yiying Lu. Like her simple style and every products are neat and attractive. I hope there will be more articles for fresh illustrator and people who start to learn illustration in the following days.
- 25March 4th, 2010 7:27 am
Agreed on the photoreal stuff. It only proves the artists had way too much time on their hands. Using illustrator to meticulously trace art without even adding your own creative interpretation? Kinda lame and requires no skill, only patience.
- 26March 4th, 2010 8:23 am
What an amazing collection of Illustrator Artists… Some of this artwork is unbelievable… I knew a sense or reality was obtainable with Gradient Meshes etc… but some of these… WOW! Great source of inspiration, thank you.
- 27March 4th, 2010 8:59 am
Great work but I’m so bored by seeing the same misogynist stuff over and over again!
- 28March 4th, 2010 9:00 am
These were great. I am a bit of a comic book fan and if you are too you should check out Artist Rudy Garcia. He does some awesome illustrations and sculptures.
- 29March 4th, 2010 9:14 am
Wow, wonderful list. Some great artworks that I found truly inspirational.
- 30March 4th, 2010 9:14 am
Really good collection. I’m focussing on Illustrator right now and this article is a true inspiration. Love to see Halim Ghodbane’s mesh outlines. I can only imagine the painstaking work that go into his images.
More, more. - 31March 4th, 2010 9:28 am
very nice!!!!
- 32March 4th, 2010 9:52 am
Personally, I think this is one of the best roundups of vector illustrators I’ve yet seen. It’s a great survey of the various types of art that are possible using Adobe Illustrator. I feel honored to be included among such an excellent bunch of artists.
Also, although I personally don’t do a lot of tracing or photo-realistic art in Illustrator, folks who do shouldn’t be so easily dismissed. What they do takes much more than patience — it requires a good deal of artistic skill. If their work is “lame,” the same can be said of the Renaissance masters who basically used the camera obscura to trace projected images and create photo-realistic paintings. That period of artistic “enlightenment” had as much to do with technology as it had to do with talent!
- 33March 4th, 2010 9:52 am
Wow! Some incredibly talented artists. Beautiful artwork all. Thank you for compiling such an extensive collection. :)
- 34March 4th, 2010 10:03 am
Great stuff here!
- 35March 4th, 2010 11:02 am
Amazing Artwork.
I hope that those people who think this sucks have ever tried to create something similar, because otherwise they don’t know what they’re talking about. From experience I can say that it takes a lot of patience, practice and organizational skills not to get lost with all those shapes.
Bookmarked! :o)
- 36March 4th, 2010 11:11 am
I’m trying to learn how to draw and illustrate right now. These people are so skilled! Thank you for sharing them.
- 37March 4th, 2010 12:04 pm
Very nice and impressive round-up of illustrators.. I like Rod Hunt and Susanne Paschke most.
- 38March 4th, 2010 12:06 pm
This is a very nice collection.
I also love the works of Joel Anderson.
You can see is posters here https://www.andersondesigngroupstore.com/index_store_details.cfm - 39March 4th, 2010 12:56 pm
Thank you so much for including me in the article. I don’t feel worthy of being in the company of a lot of these wonderful artists but I feel very lucky! Thanks!
- 40March 4th, 2010 1:19 pm
A lot of fun stuff here. Illustration is a great way to escape reality and if you can draw and get paid for it, even better!
- 41March 4th, 2010 2:43 pm
I know a really good illustrator from Honduras. His name is Wilmer Murillo, here is his website: http://www.wilmermurillo.com
Enjoy.
- 42March 4th, 2010 2:54 pm
This is an awesome collection of vector artwork! Very inspirational stuff! Thank you so much for featuring me here. I am very honored.
- 43March 4th, 2010 5:12 pm
I’m a huge fan of Michael Heald. Very inspiring!
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- 45March 4th, 2010 5:32 pm
I was really really really hoping that there wouldn’t be any cute monsters holding girls eating ice-creams but alas ………
- 46March 4th, 2010 5:33 pm
oh….and Aquil, ‘Vote for Pedro’ dude
- 47March 4th, 2010 8:09 pm
There’s a lot of good illustrations here. I came across this guy’s stuff the other day. It’s pretty cool.
- 48March 4th, 2010 9:00 pm
Thanks for the awesome collection of vectors! It’s both encouraging and inspiring to see what is going on ‘out there’..
- 49March 4th, 2010 9:21 pm
awsome artwork…… god level inspiartional
- 50March 4th, 2010 9:44 pm
I really couldn’t believe my eyes when saw Halim Ghodbane’s work…
- 51March 4th, 2010 9:53 pm
Hai………..
Amazing collections!!!
- 52March 4th, 2010 10:42 pm
Some amazing work!
- 53March 4th, 2010 11:33 pm
Thanks for the Great Collection!
Well I like detailed work of Michael Heald, Rod Hunt and Yukio Miyamoto. Amazing work guys!!!!I’m big fan of Illustrator,, Well I was using Corel Draw earlier but after use of Illustrator I never tried corel :-). Don’t know why Smashing magazine forgot me to add in this post lol!!! :-) If somebody want to see my illustration then visit this link ( http://www.smashingapps.com/2008/11/28/31-creative-examples-of-mascots-to-grab-your-attention.html )
- 54March 4th, 2010 11:48 pm
What about this picture (photo-auto.fr/citroen/c6.html) used in Halim Ghodbane’s work ? Which is the performance to make a blue sky or to modify a number plate ??
- 55March 5th, 2010 1:10 am
Also check out this talented illustrator from the Netherlands:
http://www.sandermans.nl - 56March 5th, 2010 1:53 am
Why limit yourself to Illustrator? Just talk about vector graphics. There are cool apps, especially Inkscape, which is Free by the way.
- 57March 5th, 2010 3:15 am
Some of them are just crazy good.
- 58March 5th, 2010 3:45 am
Nice collection buddy.
- 59March 5th, 2010 4:18 am
No Words !! Great Collection !!
I have also done some work, check http://www.flickr.com/photos/kedarweb/show/ - 60March 5th, 2010 4:51 am
Now that’s an eye-full this morning!
These will make for some awesome Palm Pre wallpapers for sure.
- 61March 5th, 2010 6:23 am
Some of these are stunning.
- 62March 5th, 2010 7:43 am
Thanks for the article Aquil!
I second Chris Leavens (and totally love your style man, especially your tonal range, very subtle and very easy on the eye), it feels great to be grouped with such a strong collection of fellow illustrators!
Thanks!
Mike.
- 63March 5th, 2010 10:01 am
Wow! What a great collection!
By the way, thanks for the Voltron illustration. It’s was one of my favorite cartoons in childhood, but I’d totally forgotten about it since I’ve seen it now =)
- 64March 5th, 2010 1:53 pm
You left out AYA KATO http://www.ayakato.net/ ! I understand there are too many but her not making the list? Thanks though for this list of mad skilled artists!
- 65March 6th, 2010 2:05 am
Great collection.
- 66March 6th, 2010 6:31 pm
Thanks a lot for including me in this amazing article with this breathtaking artists :)
- 67March 6th, 2010 8:15 pm
What an inspiring post… I do really like Michael Heald’s works, eyecatching.
- 68March 7th, 2010 3:11 am
crazy one,, lol i like it
- 69March 7th, 2010 3:57 pm
I’m afraid I have to say I am not inspired by any of this. Aside from the exceptionally amazing photorealistic works, it all looks like the same CCC (or, Cutesy Creature C**p). Far too much of the illustration world is dominated by this derivative, pseudo-Japanese style cartoonish stuff, and it all looks the same. I can respect the craft and the technique, but if I see one more squinty little vector bunny, I’m going to retch.
- 70March 8th, 2010 2:34 am
Just Waw!!!
- 71March 9th, 2010 5:40 pm
Really nice illustrations! Love it.
- 72March 9th, 2010 8:04 pm
Lovely, so lovely. I wonder why SM don’t use the “lazy load” plugin for loading images instead of pre-loading them and burden the browser!
- 73March 10th, 2010 3:26 am
great works, but honestly nothing fresh…
- 74April 20th, 2010 3:45 pm
I agree check this one out
http://minercia.deviantart.com/I really like her stuff!!!
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- 75March 10th, 2010 5:34 am
Fantastic works! Thanks a lot for such good inspiration! These people are extremely talanted :)
- 76March 10th, 2010 6:27 am
wow! all of them are cool… :) an inspiration for all designer out there.. :D
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- 78March 15th, 2010 12:14 pm
Your missing Carlos weisz, a toronto based illustrator and designer who features a weakly cartoon in the blogTo
- 79March 19th, 2010 8:56 am
Great collection!
Heidy Gomez
- 80March 28th, 2010 7:26 pm
fantastic collection!!!
- 81March 28th, 2010 9:02 pm
Everyone has their own style of artwork, I love all the artworks…
Great work! - 82April 4th, 2010 9:39 pm
ponkaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
- 83April 10th, 2010 5:30 am
Cool and nice:)))
- 84April 18th, 2010 6:19 am
really liked alot of these designers…maybe interested in using a few talents for our clothing company!!!!! Get in contact with us..
- 85July 26th, 2010 10:02 pm
the magic spring- love it!!
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Great artwork