Whitnie Barnes
26 September 2016
Art 3460: Illustration
The Mechanics of Visualizing
As time goes on, the
tools to make illustrations are modified and advanced. Artistic movements
through history help us better understand the history of illustration in
general. Though illustrators create art with a commercial purpose, etc. they
are still advancing and changing expressive styles largely due to just
advancements in technology and other innovations, but perhaps most importantly,
the motivation to create something new and original. Through some
experimentation and trial and error, the designer or illustrator will discover their
style.
Most of the time, less is more – leave
some to the imagination. The most important thing to focus on is the message,
yet you still want to your aesthetics and technique to be skillful. Work with
different tools often and you’ll get better at “extracting images from your
mind and successfully commit them to paper or screen.”
The basis of the visual
art world is drawing. One can manipulate different pressures and thicknesses
directly onto the page in a detailed manner. There are also other supplies like
pastel, crayon, and chalk which are much softer creating more of a hazy effect.
Moreover, there are many variations of paper - it is just as essential to choose
a proper kind of paper as it is choosing a tool to implement your drawing. Also,
there are many different kinds of erasers; remember that which eraser you
choose also should depend on the kind of paper and drawing tool you use. Another
aspect is the sharpening tool, which depends on which drawing tool you use. Other
drawing tools include but are not limited to the following: pen and ink, brush
and ink, and the computer.
Furthermore, the drawing
is divided into two components: the sketch and the finished drawing. The sketch
is nice for getting your ideas onto paper so that you can see what needs to be
fixed or added, etc. It is a quick way to open discussion and advance your
work. Many different professions (like photography, film, etc.) utilize
sketching because it’s a fast and cheaper way to visibly progress and talk
about their ideas. On the other hand, an image or drawing doesn’t have to contain
incredible detail to be a finished drawing; what matters is that the image looks
“complete, without need for addition or subtraction, and contains both accuracy
in observation and authenticity – the audience is convinced that the artist
knows their subject intimately.”
Now the world of
illustration can be categorized into these two components: the observed and the
imagined. On one hand, observational drawing is exactly what it sounds like –
you sit there and you look at whatever you want to draw and you draw it. You
choose what to include even if the objects are moving. Objects or figures or
any other details can be added later, they might even be from other drawings.
On the other hand, imagined drawing is trickier – you decide how objects from
reality are brought together. You should do plenty of research on the subjects and
use your imagination. Illustrations do something photos cannot so easily: “they
elucidate ideas, show us the future, take us to places that we can never go to,
and visualize our interior worlds.”
Color can be applied to
images through paint, printmaking, the computer, etc. Paints that illustrators
have tended to favor include the following water-based paints: gouache,
acrylic, and watercolor paints. Printmaking is basically a term used to
describe an assortment of techniques used to duplicate an image. These
techniques include: wood engraving, linocut, Drypoint, etching, engraving,
lithography, screenprinting, monoprinting, and digital printing. Next is
assemblage (collage), where you use different pieces of images that you can
appropriate from and mix them together.
Different regions around
the globe have their different conventions of depicting space. It is important
for learners to learn different systems of visual identity and explore them. In
India, objects that are in the distance are depicted at the top of the page and
by overlapping them with other objects or figures. The East Asian artistic
convention or style employs minimalistic calligraphic drawings that are most
often monochrome. The African tradition viewed drawing or sketching as a
preparatory means before painting or sculpting. Egyptian hieroglyphs show
interesting perspectives on the human body with a mixture of the profile and frontal
views. Since the Renaissance, Westerners have sought to spatially depict things
in the way the human eye actually perceives things. Today it doesn’t take as
much time to depict something as the human eye sees it thanks to photography
and other technological advancements.