Written by Rebecca Jobling
Digital Illustration In Recent Years
Over the recent years digital illustration has become more popular and more accessible. It has even been suggested that it might cause non-digital illustrators to become obsolete. So what is it that has made illustrators turn to digital work apart from the pressure to keep up with demand? After looking in books such as ‘The Fundamentals of Illustration’ and ‘Hand to Eye, Contemporary Illustration’ It looks like a lot of people seemed to turn digital because it can be faster and easy to change and manipulate your work the artist is always free to reposition elements of their work, as well as re-colouring and re-touching. This means that the final piece of work can always be altered. The computer allows us to get rid of an area of pure labour. For example the design below was achieved easily on the computer; I just made a quarter of the image then duplicated it. The image would have taken me much longer by hand to complete.
Obviously being able to create work quickly and make changes so easily is an important point for illustrators but there other benefits of digital illustration you can achieve things that probably aren’t possible if you work non-digitally and there are some amazing digital artists out there. Technology has the advantage of reaching a wider audience and making creative work more accessible. Working digitally also allows you to access things that you otherwise may not be able to use; software today allows the artist to simulate a huge variety of tools and media. The following digital images show how effects like acrylic paint can be simulated digitally, they even react the same way when mixed with ‘digital water’ etc.
Why do people still prefer Tradition Illustration
But there are illustrators today that still prefer working the old fashioned way and spend all day every day on their work even though they could probably achieve a similar outcome much quicker using technology. With Digital methods being so fast and convenient, why would illustrators still choose to work non-digitally? When I looked into this I found that some illustrators feel that traditional illustration has something ‘unique’ about it that cannot be captured in a digital image.
I asked a group of student illustrators what they thought and they agreed that non-digital illustration has a different feel completely compared to digital work. Most of them didn’t like the fact that with digital illustration their work only exists on a screen and there is no physical outcome. A lot of them also said that the process was more enjoyable and that with non digital work you can see the time and care that has been put into the image they all said that it was the flaws and mistakes in the non digital illustrations that made them special. Most of them said that they would only use the computer occasionally as a tool to alter their work etc. but a lot of them wanted to avoid it.
Mixing Digital Illustration with Traditional Illustration
Even though I prefer working traditionally I see the computer as a valuable tool to help with my work adding tints and changing brightness etc. For example the following image was created with inks then after scanning I added the white reflection in the eye and the block purple background.
And the following Image was created in separate layers then put together in Photoshop. The background is ink splattered paper I then created the trees by using cardboard cut-outs and taking photos of their shadow on the paper, the white rabbits were drawn separately and dropped in on top, I then added a mask and created the fade into black.
When I carried out this research I was looking to find out what the future might hold for traditional illustration as it seemed to be getting lost in this digital revolution. And I think it’s safe to say that we won’t lose it. It looks like we might reach a balance of the two methods and there seems to be a lot of interesting hybrid styles appearing today.
The Author
Rebecca Jobling is an illustrator in the North East of England, She enjoyed working as a teaching assistant in a primary school for five years prior to university, but has always had a passion for art. She achieved BA (Hons) in Illustration and Design at Sunderland university. She loves all things creative and enjoys experimenting with different media in her work.
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A wise man once told me ‘You’re only as good as your last piece of work’ I like to keep this in mind when im working on projects.
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