Fred Irvin is a realistic illustrator who did magazine covers, advertisements, and story illustrations during the 1940s and 1950s, and moved to animation in the 1970s. Born in Chillicothe, Missouri, he attended the Kansas City Art Institute in 1935, and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts the following year. His career as an illustrator brought him to New York in 1940, where he began his professional career.

During World War II he served in visual aids unit of the army, and was stationed on the island of Saipan. After his discharge in 1946, he continued to live and work in New York, illustrating magazine serials such as "Secrets of the Scotland Yard," and producing covers and inside work for American Weekly, VFW, and Elks magazines, among others.

During the 1960s, he relocated with his family to Santa Barbara, California, where he began to provide artwork for textbooks and Disney stories. He later moved into the animation field, doing drawings for Ruby Spears and Hanna Barbera. He also experimented with pastels and watercolors.

Irvin is a full member of the Pastel Society of New York, the Society of Illustrators, and a former board member of the Santa Barbara Art Association. His war sketches, taken from his time on Saipan, are on display at the Alfred Nimitz Museum of Wartime Art in Fredricksburg, Texas. He lives in retirement in southern California.