An “illustration” is a visualisation or
depiction made by an artist, or
illustrator, such as a drawing, sketch,
painting, photograph or other kind
of image of things seen, remembered
or imagined.
An “illustration” is a visualisation or
depiction made by an artist, or
illustrator, such as a drawing, sketch,
painting, photograph or other kind
of image of things seen, remembered
or imagined.
Printing is currently the most usual process for reproducing illustrations, typically with ink on paper using a
printing press. Illustrations can be artistic images illustrating perhaps text, poems, fashion designs, stamps,
magazines or books; its aim however is to elucidate or decorate by providing a visual representation of
something described in (the) text. Illustrations can also represent scientific images of flora, medicine
or different processes, a biological or chemical process or a technical illustration to provide information
on how to use something.
Printing is currently the most usual process for reproducing illustrations, typically with ink on paper using a
printing press. Illustrations can be artistic images illustrating perhaps text, poems, fashion designs, stamps,
magazines or books; its aim however is to elucidate or decorate by providing a visual representation of
something described in (the) text. Illustrations can also represent scientific images of flora, medicine
or different processes, a biological or chemical process or a technical illustration to provide information
on how to use something.
A series of drawings commissioned by Chanel to record their first ever catwalk show in London, 2008.
The Tyger (1794), en Songs of Experience de William Blake
Joe was born and raised on Staten Island NY, just a short ferry ride to Manhattan where he attended The High School of Art and Design and college at Parsons earning a BFA degree.
Since 1974 he has worked for most major magazines and newspapers as well as for corporate and advertising clients, book publishers and record companies. Joe's portraits of authors
have appeared in the New York Times Book Review. Among his awards are four silver medals from the Society of Illustrators. He has been profiled in Communication Arts
Magazine as well as other graphic arts journals.
One of the largest is editorial illustration; this type of illustrator creates illustrations for magazines and newspapers and because they are generally weekly or
monthly that means regular and varied work for an illustrator.
”Blue Ink” By Anne Sofie Madsen
”Blue Ink” is composed of delicate dissertations of light, shade and form. Uniting intrinsically-different images into intricate
simultaneous studies, these watercolor, gouache and pencil creations breathe chilling life from the page.
Mackeral, Michelle Morin.
Emma Leonard
Johanna Basford
Charcoal, Reece Jones.
Robert Longo is an American painter and sculptor whose primary medium of expression is charcoal on paper.
Longo became famous in the 1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.
Collage, Angelica Paez.
Memento Mori: Absence, Mandy Pattullo. (Blind embossed gloves with stitching and fragments of lace and fabric).
Alicia Buszczak
Salthouse, Angie Lewin Linocut Print.
These woodcuts by Bold illustrate Walter de la Mare's Stuff and Nonsense, and So On (Constable, 1927), a collection of light poems.
Albrecht Durer.
Chrissy Norman - Artist & Printmaker - Etchings of Suffolk - Trees
The earliest illustration examples can be traced back to the paintings found on cave walls and ceilings of the Aurignacian period about 40,000 years ago
in the El Castillo cave in Cantabria, Spain. The exact purpose of the cave paintings is not known, but evidence suggests that they were not just
decorations of living areas, since the caves in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing habitation and they are also often located in
areas that were not easily accessible. One theory believes that the paintings were a way of communicating with others, whilst another ascribes them
with a religious or ceremonial purpose.
The Cueva de El Castillo, or the Cave of the Castle, is an archaeological site within the complex of the Caves of Monte Castillo, and is located in Puente Viesgo, in the province of Cantabria, Spain.
It contains the oldest known cave art in the world. Hand stencils and disks made by blowing paint onto the wall in El Castillo cave were found to date back to at least 40,800 years, making them the
oldest known cave art in Europe, 5-10,000 years older than previous examples from France.
This cave was discovered in 1903 by Hermilio Alcalde del Río, the Spanish archaeologist, who was one of the pioneers in the study of the earliest cave paintings of Cantabria.
The entrance to the cave was smaller in the past, but it has been enlarged as a result of archeological excavations.
By way of this entrance one can access the different rooms in which Alcalde del Río found an extensive sequence of images.
The paintings and other markings span from the Lower Paleolithic to the Bronze Age, and even into the Middle Ages. There are over
150 figures already catalogued, including those that emphasize the engravings of a few deer, complete with shadowing.
Six-foot (2-meter) paintings of horses in Spain's Tito Bustillo Cave overlay earlier red paintings that, from dating
elsewhere in the cave, might be older than 29,000 years.
Hand stencils and the outlines of animals dominate "The Panel of Hands" in Spain's El Castillo cave.
Illustration however did appear in a decorative form as delicate biblical illustrations in western religious manuscripts.
The evangelist portrait and Incipit to Matthew from the Stockholm Codex Aureus, one of the "Tiberius group", show the
Northumbrian Insular and classicising continental styles that combined and competed in early Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.
Known as illuminated manuscripts these religious illustrations added decoration to the written text and included such elements as borders
(marginalia) decorated initials and miniature illustrations. In the most strict definition of the term, an illuminated manuscript only
refers to those decorated with gold or silver, but in common usage the term is now used to refer to any decorated or illustrated manuscript.
Borders (marginalia)
Catherine of Cleves kneels before the Virgin and Child. Her arms, with those of her husband, Duke Arnold of Guelders, are in the bottom center; the arms of her ancestors are in each corner.
Illustrated Marginalia, Flight of the Witches, Manuscript, Martin Le France, 1451.
Decorated initials, The Lindisfarne Gospels.
Book illustration arrived formally after the invention of the printing press but woodcut illustrations were already common in Japan and China
to accompany hand written books.
Woodblock prints were initially used as early as the 8th century to disseminate texts in Japan, especially
Buddhist scriptures; however until the 18th century, woodblock printing remained primarily a convenient
method of reproducing written texts.
Kengu-kyo Sutra (Buddhist scripture), Known as Ojomu, Attributed to the emperor Shomu, Nara Period, 8th century.
In 1765, new technology made it possible to produce single—sheet prints in a whole range of colours. Printmakers who had previously
worked in monochrome (1 colour or shades of one colour) and painted the colours by hand, or had printed only a few colours, gradually came
to use full polychrome (a variety of colours) printing to spectacular effect.
The first polychrome prints, or nishiki—e, were calendars made on commission for a group of rich patrons in Edo, where it was the
custom to exchange beautifully designed calendars at the beginning of the year.
The 17th and 18th centuries were an important time in the history of illustration as printing methods such
as etching, engraving and lithography facilitated a speedier process and the ability to reach a wider audience.
Portrait of Luca Giordano, etching, 18th century.
Anonymous (French, 18th century), The Two Are but One (Les Deux Ne Font Qu'un), Ca. 1791, Hand-colored etching, sheet: 15 x 21.3 cm,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962 (62.520.106).
A Rake's Progress, Plate 8, William Hogarth, engraving, 1735.
Engraved portrait of Marie Antoinette, 18th century, engraving, Nicolas Joseph Voyez (1742-1806).
Jenny Lind as Amina in Bellini's 'La Sonnambula', lithographic print, circa 1847.
In 1833, Charles Joseph Hullmandel (1789-1850) published The Art of Drawing on Stone.
In England many famous illustrators such as William Hogarth, who concentrated on socio—satirical themes;
William Blake, who is best known for his religious engravings;
and George Cruickshank, who created the illustrations for Charles Dickens’ books
embraced these printing techniques and published many seminal works.
William Hogarth, who concentrated on socio—satirical themes;
TASTE IN HIGH LIFE, IN THE YEAR 1742.
Hogarth painted by the order of Miss Edwards, a woman of large fortune, who having been laughed at for some singularities in her manners, requested the artist to recriminate on her opponents,
and paid him sixty guineas for his production. It is professedly intended to ridicule the reigning fashions of high life, in the year 1742: to do this, the painter has brought into one group, an old
beau and an old lady of the Chesterfield school, a fashionable young lady, a little black boy, and a full-dressed monkey. The old lady, with a most affected air, poises, between her finger and
thumb, a small tea-cup, with the beauties of which she appears to be highly enamoured.
William Blake, who is best known for his religious engravings;
Copy A of Blake's original printing of The Tyger, c. 1795. Copy A is currently held by the British Museum.
William Blake Infant Joy, Songs of Innocence (1789)
George Cruickshank, who created the illustrations for Charles Dickens’ books.
George Cruikshank (1792-1878), was a noted cartoonist with a biting line in sarcasm and political satire. He was also the first illustrator of Oliver Twist, one of the greatest novels penned by his close friend, Charles Dickens, with such memorable pictures as 'Oliver Asking For More and 'Fagin In The Condemned Cell'. Their friendship ended when, later in life, the cartoonist became a passionate advocate for the temperance movement while Dickens remained opposed.
Cruikshank was considered a great enough artist to be exhumed from his original burial place in order to be re-buried in St Paul's Cathedral, London.
'The Bloomsbury Christening', (for 'Sketches by Boz' by Charles Dickens), George Cruikshank etched illustration, circa 1830s.
George Cruikshank. April from The comic almanack for 1835. London, 1835.
The late 1800s and early 1900s are considered to be the golden age sof illustration with numerous works
frequently appearing in books and magazines, both in Europe and the US. where a multiplicity of styles
developed and drew influences from the art of the time, as well as the Arts and Crafts Movement and Art Deco.
First issue of The Studio Magazine, an illustrated magazine of fine and applied art, cover by Aubrey Beardsley, 1893.
William Morris, Poems by the Way, 1897
Walter Crane, considered to be the most influential and prolific children’s book creator of his generation, was at the forefront of
the golden age, along with Kate Greenaway, with their traditional romantic illustrations influenced by the pre—Raphaelites.
Walter Crane, illustration from Beauty and the Beast, 1875.jpg
Under the Window by Kate Greenaway, circa 1880.
The Pre-Raphaelites: The concept of 'Truth to Nature' espoused by the greatest Victorian writer on art, John Ruskin, was founded upon a romantic perception of the natural world.
The brotherhood wanted a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art.
John Everett Millais
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter and Illustrator
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine, 1874.
This is one of a set of six drawings to illustrate "There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe." It was later used in Appley Dapply's Bedtime.
Arthur Rackham (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) was an English book illustrator.
Arthur Rackham is widely regarded as one of the leading illustrators from the 'Golden Age' of British book illustration which encompassed the years from 1900 until the start of the First World War.
During that period, there was a strong market for high quality illustrated books that typically were given as Christmas gifts. Many of Rackham's books were produced in a de luxe limited edition,
often vellum bound and sometimes signed, as well as a larger, less ornately bound quarto 'trade' edition. This was often followed by a more modestly presented octavo edition in subsequent years
for particularly popular books. The onset of the war in 1914 curtailed the market for such quality books, and the public's taste for fantasy and fairies also declined in the 1920s.
Arthur Rackham's "The Rescue"
Hansel & Grethel & Other Tales by Brothers Grimm.
The Peacock Skirt, by Aubrey Beardsley, (1892)
The Aesthetic Movement is an art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts.
Decorative art must first have utility but may also be beautiful.
Bruce James Talbert - Design for 'The Sunflower' wallpaper, Design for 'The Sunflower' wallpaper Bruce James Talbert Made by Jeffrey & Co. London 1878 Watercolour and body colour.
WILLIAM MORRIS, Green Dining Room, South Kensington Museum (now Victoria & Albert Museum), London, England, 1867.
Tour of Rodolphe Salis' Chat Noir, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Poster, 1896, Color lithograph.
Due to the convergence of a number of factors in the US. including newly developing printing techniques (1880s a half—tone process and 1900 full—colour
reproduction), paper production becoming cheaper, railways facilitating distribution and a population which was expanding and becoming
wealthier, magazines such as Harper’s Monthly took advantage of these circumstances to build enormous circulations— and they needed art
work for their pages. Meanwhile, publishers, particularly of children’s books, also found that the new techniques and new markets could
make their business highly profitable.
Harper's Magazine (also called Harper's) is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts.
Launched in June 1850, it is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S.
Harper's Monthly Magazine (Cover) December 1918
Edward Penfield, Harper’s Sept., poster for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Sep 1893.
Edward Penfield, Harper’s for Marchl, Poster for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine,
Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs With Laughable Colored Engravings
THE LITTLE PIG'S RAMBLE FROM HOME, LITTLE PIG'S TALE. Circa 1850.
BRITISH-AMERICAN [NEWSPAPER] BOUND NEWSPAPERS JAN 6, 1900- DEC 14, 1901.
Herbert Bayer for Fortune magazine
The lonely Metropolitain (1932)
Ironically, illustrators of the Golden Age had inspired a younger generation of artists, however these younger artists had to compete not only with the established masters of magazine
illustration, but with the growing use of photography and its influence onadvertising. While it provided artists with new “spaces” for their work, it also demanded fresh, contemporary styles that reflected
the jazz age and other changes taking place in the world in general.
"We Can Do It!" is an American wartime propaganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost worker morale.
Salvage - Up Housewives and at 'em - put out your paper, metal, bones. Artist Yates-Wilson, 1939-46.
Some illustrators such as Robert Henri, both artist and teacher, became key players in the new art movement Social Realism which was committed to American
“art” reflecting American “life” including the pretty, the ugly and the in—between. This realism manifested itself in many forms and whilst the visual styles differed, the
message was the same.
Robert Henri (24 June 1865 – 12 July 1929) was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School of American realism and an organizer of the group known as
"The Eight," a loose association of artists who protested the restrictive exhibition practices of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design.
Cut The Line, depicting the launch of a US. Navy Tank Landing Ship, Thomas Hart Benton, 1944.
Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930, Oil on Beaver Board
The 50s were a decade marked by economic growth: many new brands and products came to life, increased leisure time lead to fast
food restaurants and the movies; and housewives smiled whilst cleaning their all—new electrical gadgets.
Exterior view of the first McDonald's fast food restaurant with its neon arches illuminated at night, Des Plaines, Illinois. Circa 1955.
During this time the average US. salary increased by 50%, a middle class arouse, credit cards were introduced, babies were booming
and men supported their families by working long hours in office jobs. Everyone seemed to live a dream come true— happy and content andthis utopia was reflected perfectly
in the work of Norman Rockwell.
The Runaway, 1958
Football Hero, Norman Rockwell, 1955.
Milton Glaser, Poster for Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, 1975.
The "I Love New York" logo was designed by Milton Glaser in 1977.
I Love New York (stylized I ♥ NY) is both a logo and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign and have been used since 1977 to promote tourism in New York City,
and later to promote New York State as well. The trademarked logo appears in souvenir shops and brochures throughout the state, some licensed, many not. The song is the state song of New York.
Chess, 1973, Illustrations by Reynold Ruffins.
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Trout! Teri Sloat; Illustrated by Reynold Ruffins
Edward Sorel
The Push Pin Graphic
A Quarter Century of Innovative Design and Illustration
by Seymour Chwast, edited by Steven Heller and Martin Venezky
Introduction by Milton Glaser
Chronicle Books, 2006
Double Exposure Photography experiments by Dan Mountford
The past decades have seen a focus on the digital graphic arts and with its continued expansion, graphic artists are not only gaining momentum in
the media (and other) world(s) but also in the art field.
The circulation of the image was rapid: from posters, to stickers, to mugs and t—shirts and its presence online went viral. But why did this
image become iconic so quickly?
Fairey’s style is very current, he has played a seminal role in street and graffiti arts, and it engaged the
demographic that the Obama campaign was targeting (which is the demographic that can make images or stories become viral).
And, attesting to its importance the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery acquired Fairey’s
hand—finished collage in stencil and acrylic on paper with the word “hope”.