Introduction to Illustration
Illustration covers so many genres, styles, and purposes that it is difficult to encapsulate them with one definition. Broadly put, an illustration is a visual representation of a subject done through drawing, painting, or photograph. But the more common understanding of illustration falls belongs to free-hand drawing, drawings reproduced as wood-cuts or etchings, and, in recent years, computer illustration.
From the purely practical need for textbook illustrations, steps in manuals, visual advertising, to the more interpretive artist levels like imagining how characters in a story look, illustrations express subtle concepts, themes and emotions in a narrative.
Because illustration tends to be representational, it has often be relegated to the position of a lower art. This may have been exacerbated by its sheer popularity in books and magazines, which hit an all time high during the first part of the 20th century: illustration's Golden Age. The second, shorter Golden Age of illustration occurred in the 1950s and 1960s with hundreds of illustrators working. Magazines and billboards used illustration and in the U.S., the work of Norman Rockwell was embraced as an affectionate reflection of 'everyday folks'.
Illustration's decline came with the rising popularity of photography and design in visual communications. Yet with the advent of personal computer technology taking off in the 1990s, illustrators began to experiment with drawing software like Illustrator and Photoshop. The emergence of computer illustration has added a new dimension to the field, yet students are still trained in the traditional methods of illustration. Fusion illustration is a byproduct of this, crossing the boundaries of the hand-drawn and the computer drawn creating hybrid works that incorporate illustration, graphic design, typography, and photography.
Today illustration still fights for its place as a fine art, with its proponents hoping to help it reclaim a place in magazines and advertising and bring it back from the margins of the public imagination.