Most illustrators move between projects and styles. The ten artists below did something different: they found one character, or one repeated visual idea, and built years or decades of work around it. Some of these characters have their own toy lines and Apple TV shows. Others are still just ink on paper, appearing in a weekly newspaper strip. All of them are instantly recognizable the moment you see them.
1. Jon Burgerman's doodle characters
Jon Burgerman draws a recurring cast of fuzzy-edged, googly-eyed blob people, squashed together and balanced precariously on top of each other in aerosol paint and bold color. He's been drawing this cast since the 2000s, and the work now sits in the V&A's collection in London and Austria's OÖ-Kultur, alongside a 2017 group show at Tate Modern. Burgerman is British, born in 1979, and splits his time between New York and Nottingham.
2. Parra's stylized women
Piet Parra, who works under the name Parra, paints surreal figures in flat, hard-edged blocks of saturated color, a visual language he's used across painting, sculpture and textiles since the early 2000s. The Dutch artist, born in 1976 and based in Amsterdam, co-founded the By Parra apparel label and has work in SFMOMA's permanent collection. He won the Amsterdam Art Prize in 2010 and a D&AD Silver Pencil in 2011.
3. Steven Harrington's monster characters
Steven Harrington paints smiling monster and palm-tree hybrid characters in acid colors, part of what his own site calls a contemporary Californian psychedelic-pop movement. The motif has recurred across his paintings, murals and outdoor sculpture for close to a decade. Harrington was born and raised in Los Angeles and still works there. He's had a solo museum show at the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul, designed footwear for Nike, and installed a permanent bronze sculpture in Gumi City, Korea.
4. Gemma Correll's pug
Gemma Correll has drawn the same round, worried-looking pug for more than a decade, across cartoons, greeting cards and her book "A Pug's Guide to Etiquette." The character, often nicknamed Pugly, anchors a wider cast of cats and other pets that show up across her books and products. Correll is British, born in Ipswich in 1984, now based in Orange County, California. She's drawn for The New York Times, Oxford University Press and Hallmark, and has been a regular contributor to The Nib since 2014.
5. Jim Woodring's Frank
Frank is a wordless, bipedal, bucktoothed creature Jim Woodring calls a "generic anthropomorph," wandering a surreal world Woodring calls the Unifactor. Frank first appeared in Woodring's anthology comic "Jim" in 1986 and spun off into his own series in 1996, making him one of the longest-running single-character art comics still being drawn. Woodring is American, born in Los Angeles in 1952, now based in Washington State. "Frank" placed 55th on The Comics Journal's list of the best comics of the century, and Woodring won a Harvey Award for Best Colorist in 1993.
6. Tom Gauld's robots and knights
Tom Gauld draws a recurring cast of robots, dinosaurs, spacemen, knights and put-upon writers through his single-panel cartoons for The Guardian, which he's drawn weekly since 2005, and for New Scientist since 2015. The same cast turns up in his graphic novels, including "Goliath," "Mooncop" and "Department of Mind-Blowing Theories." Gauld is Scottish, born in Aberdeenshire in 1976, now based in London.
7. John Bond's dogs
John Bond draws warm, expressive dog characters that run through the "Dogs in Disguise" and "Cats in Chaos" picture books he illustrates with author Peter Bently, plus his own solo book "How Long Is That Dog?" Bond is British, based in Worthing on England's south coast, and studied illustration at Kingston University in London. "Dogs in Disguise" won the Shropshire Bookfest Award and was read on CBeebies Bedtime Stories by Rowan Atkinson. His clients include the BBC, Disney and Starbucks.
8. Nathan W. Pyle's Strange Planet aliens
Nathan W. Pyle draws blue, big-eyed aliens who describe ordinary human experiences in flatly literal language, calling a suntan "star damage" and a pet a "small creature." Strange Planet has run since February 2019 across thousands of comic panels, several bestselling books and an Apple TV+ animated series Pyle co-produces. Pyle grew up in Ohio, studied theology, and has been based in New York City since 2008. He co-writes the comic with his wife, Taylor Pyle.
9. David Shrigley's scrawled drawings
David Shrigley doesn't repeat a single named character so much as a single unmistakable visual language: crude, deliberately "wrong" stick-figure drawings paired with deadpan hand-lettered captions, a format he's used across thousands of works since the 1990s. Shrigley is British, born in Macclesfield, and lived in Glasgow for 27 years before moving to Brighton in 2015. He was a Turner Prize nominee in 2013, installed a giant bronze thumbs-up called "Really Good" on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth from 2016 to 2018, and was appointed OBE in 2020.
10. James Jarvis's round-headed characters
James Jarvis draws and sculpts a shared cast of round-headed, dot-eyed characters that span illustration and vinyl toy design, a universe he's built out since founding the toy company Amos with Sofia Prantera and Russell Waterman in 2002. Each figure in his "World of Pain" toy line carries its own name and backstory. Jarvis is British, born in London in 1970, and holds an MA from the Royal College of Art. He's exhibited at PARCO Gallery in Tokyo, installed work at Liberty of London, and collaborated with Coca-Cola on its 125th anniversary.
