A picture is worth a thousand words, right? But sometimes words and pictures together are necessary to get a point across well. Or music and pictures. Or pictures on a box. Illustrations open windows to further understanding different forms of communications. Pictures in a storybook, for example, help children learn language and help to open their imaginations. And properly selected images on well-designed packaging grab attention, set tone, and sell products, from food to software, from soft drinks to CDs.

Quite simply, illustration is the art of creating images to complement expressions in other media.

Several kinds of illustration bespeckle our daily communications, often taken for granted. Diagrams and charts show clearly what a writer or speaker is explaining. Cute little cartoon-like images scattered throughout magazine articles and employee handbooks give a friendly look, infuse a little humour, and add visual interest to a page. And no one would buy a greeting card without an illustration on the cover as integral to the message as the text itself.

I create a type of illustration referred to as "illustration with a fine arts feel." This work differs from my fine art creations, because fine art is what I make for its own sake, whereas illustration is directed toward enhancing another work. What is meant by a "fine arts feel" is the idea that these illustrations both enhance the work they are meant to adorn and are good enough and meaningful enough to stand alone as separate works of art. It also refers to a style of image. Even though these images are commercial and made to be duplicated, fine-arts-style illustrators use or strive to emulate the effects of traditional, "hand-made" media such as painting, drawing, and etching, as opposed to computer-generated looks, and give obvious care to the creation of each image. These are not simple images that are just "dashed off" to make a given point in a short deadline, but complex images of many layers which are created using the same time-consuming methods as master drawings and paintings.

Before the Victorian era, there was no distinction between fine art and illustration. All illustrations and all fine art resulted from skilled labor, usually guild members or clergy. The Victorian era, however, saw the separation of illustration into the suddenly less respected realm of "commercial art." Nevertheless, some of the best and most loved art during the Victorian era and into the present day has been produced as illustration by illustrators -- most of the Pre-Raphaelites, such as Waterhouse and Henry Justice Ford; Maxfield Parrish; N.C. Wyeth; Howard Pyle; and Edward Hopper, to name just a few. Using oil paint, pen and ink, watercolor, and woodcut, all of these artists created not only fine art, but illustration with a fine arts feel.

This style of illustration is today highly sought after. A fine painting, collage, or photograph commissioned expressly for a book jacket or other media wrapper adds a unique dimension to a potential purchaser's perception and enjoyment of the product inside. Children's books with wonderfully fresh fine art illustrations, books like Dinotopia and Tuesday, are hot sellers and consistent prize winners. This does not mean that other types of illustration are falling by the wayside; far from it. All the other kinds provide essential tools of communication, and they require highly developed, specialized skills to execute. But fine-arts-style illustration not only enhances communication, it introduces new elements of creativity, pleasure and beauty into the works for which it is selected. As one could define fine art as "art for art's sake," one could define illustration with a fine arts feel as "illustration for art's sake."

Psst -- Fontaholics: Like the font in the title? It's called "CommScript, Italic," and I have no idea where I got it or who created it.

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