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The Big Picture: Surveying the Expanding Field of Illustration

Illustrators, the world is your oyster.

Any kind of oyster you want: the one from which Botticelli procured a halfshell to cradle a carefully brushstroked Venus, an animated extra in a SpongeBob SquarePants episode, a manga-style oysteroid antagonist in a graphic novel, a collectible vinyl shellfish—you name it. Breaking out of its old set position between the covers of magazines and books—wiggling free from its flat spot on the side of a package or the face on a billboard—illustration is on the brink of a renaissance.

“It’s a very exciting time,” says Esther Pearl Watson, an instructor at Art Center College of Design and an illustrator whose résumé boasts scads of books and gallery shows along with clients such as Rolling Stone and The New York Times. “I think a lot of people are getting frightened or confused because there isn’t a name for it—I don’t think—for what’s happening right now. There’s definitely some sort of shifting and transitioning going on in terms of illustration.”

And where is the transition taking us? Nearly everywhere. In-the-know pros vary in their perceptions and prognostications, but they tend to agree on at least one thing: Illustrators have more options than ever before.

Defining Illustration

“I’ve seen monumental changes since I started,” says Anita Kunz, a Canadian-born illustrator with an illustrious 30-year career that has included chairing the Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration, receiving the Les Usherwood Lifetime Achievement Award and creating cover art for magazines ranging from The New Yorker to Sports Illustrated. “Even the term ‘illustration’—what that means—has changed over the years. When I first started as an illustrator, it was mostly about print. You could be an advertising illustrator or an editorial illustrator, but there really wasn’t much more than that.”

In the new millennium, options abound: graphic novels, animation, product development, gallery shows, DVD covers, posters, game design, the Internet—not to mention the forms of illustration not yet conceived. Some illustrators are leaving their options open to better ride the coming wave of change—a wise move, in Kunz’s opinion.

“I think it’s a mistake to specialize too soon,” Kunz says. “Things have changed so much in the past couple of decades that we have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. I really see illustrators weaving in and out of commercial work and fine art and animation and personal work and commissioned work; it’s much more fluid.”

An offshoot of that fluidity is a rise in the popularity of art galleries, including small boutique galleries and multifunction gallery/eateries, throughout North America. Speculation about the source of the trend varies. Eddie Guy says that while galleries represent some of the best places to see good, fresh illustration work or to express a personal artistic vision, he suspects that illustrators’ ventures into fine-art venues might signal a dearth of traditional illustration job options. “You could easily make an argument that it’s a bad sign,” says Guy, who, in addition to creating edgy and satirical editorial illustrations, has worked with clients including Nike, Coca-Cola and AT&T. “We all know there are way too many illustrators graduating from the schools.”

A more optimistic Watson factors in a youthful desire for creative autonomy. More and more, she says, new graduates of illustration programs don’t even call themselves “illustrators,” preferring the more general term “artists.” “When students are graduating, they’re not just saying, ‘I want to be an illustrator.’ They’re saying, ‘I want to show my work in a gallery,’” Watson says. “They’ll take commercial work if it’s interesting to them, but they’re also very interested in anything else that catches their fancy.”

Back to the Drawing Board

The blurring of the line between illustration and fine art may bring about a change that the Illustration Academy’s John English, for one, welcomes. English, whose illustration clients range from Bantam Books and Atlantic Records to Boeing and Chrysler, says he suspects that a decade-long trend toward decorative art and primitivism is finally ending—and that good drawing skills are coming back into vogue.

“What’s happened is that those anti-drawings lose their ability to communicate,” English says of simplistic illustration styles. “It was kind of a rebellion against things having so much drawing involved, but the drawing has become so weak that it has become more of a decoration. It’s less idea-driven.”

Guy agrees that a renewed emphasis on draftsmanship now characterizes the field of professional illustration—with much of the influence coming from graphic novels. He cautions, though, that schools need to keep up. “In order to have great draftsmen, you’ve got to have great instructors,” Guy says.

The return to drawing and painting skills, English predicts, will bring about a necessary improvement in illustration quality and a return to an important purpose in the profession: storytelling. “Be an artist first; then add the narrative in the artwork, and you’re an illustrator,” English says. “I think that’s a really smart way to approach it.”

Aside from the backlash against decorative art, pros see influences such as American comics, Japanese anime and other Asian art, and counterculture movements, such as graffiti art, as potentially shaping the scene. A shift away from technological dependency also may be on the horizon because, as Watson puts it, “There is a hunger for something that is done by hand.”

But perhaps the biggest influence on upcoming style changes, they agree, is time. As deadlines grow closer together and turnaround times shrink, illustrators whose styles allow for creating good work fast will become the most competitive people in the field. “I think all publications are struggling to be as current as they can, and that’s going to change the amount of time illustrators have to do their work,” Guy says.

“That will affect the style much more than anything else.”

Watson notes that even some illustrators who prefer to do entirely hand-drawn work succumb to digital manipulation simply because scanning and e-mailing work saves them time; mailing a drawing or painting to a client adds a day or more to the production schedule.

Trendstopping

Another thing the pros agree on: Following trends can equal career suicide—or, at the very least, a lot of stress. In most cases, when the mainstream is settling into a certain style, culture-makers, including the art directors who hire illustrators, have moved on.

“As soon as something becomes popular, people are already looking to replace it with anything else,” Guy says, “and usually that ‘anything else’ will be the opposite of what’s happening.”

And even if you could stay ahead of the curve, you’d have to change your style constantly to keep it up, pros say. An alternative: Distinguish yourself from the crowd, and do it early. “I think students should always just follow their own voices and figure out what they visually want to say in the world,” Kunz says. “If they can do that, they don’t have to follow trends.”

English points out that finding and expressing your own voice also can save you from the fate of replacement by stock art. Illustrators like Kunz, he says, are successful because of their distinctiveness. “The reason their work is so effective is it’s very personal,” he says. “It can’t be duplicated. You can’t find stock illustration to replace it, and you can’t get another illustrator to replace it.”

Illustrator as Commentator

One industry trend Kunz wouldn’t mind seeing stopped is the gradual depletion of controversy and commentary from editorial illustration work in mainstream print media. When she started in the industry, she says, “You could do really creative, crazy stuff. Years ago I used to be able to make pictures that were controversial or political satire or poking fun at something. Now it’s much harder to get that into print.” The reasons? Kunz points to an increasingly conservative social climate, a “politically correct” cultural norm and a shift in the publishing hierarchy; whereas art directors once made the decisions on visual content, now editors and publishers, who aren’t trained in art direction, have the final say. As a result, illustrators have to jump through a lot of hoops, and the work ends up being diluted.

Kunz hopes young illustrators understand the importance of social commentary in their work. “The students are the ones who are going to be in charge very soon,” Kunz points out. “I think it’s critical for them to be really aware of what’s going on. I would like to see more comment about the culture. We have such powerful voices as artists—especially people who are marginalized, who are not in the mainstream; it’s critical for them to be making images about their experiences.”

It’s the responsibility of illustrators, the pros agree, to be constantly tuned in to social, political and cultural happenings and for their work to reflect their observations. This value, many veteran illustrators fear, may be lost on the new generation.

“I do see a lot of people who are not aware at all, who are just kind of in their own bubble,” Watson concedes. “That frightens me.”

Ultimately, the key to effective illustration, in the present and in the future, Kunz says, may be coupling cultural awareness with a well-developed knack for self-expression.

“The best illustrator is the one who’s closest to his or her vision—who tries to be the most original and who tries to really make images that talk about how they feel in the world and their experiences,” Kunz says, “and that’s really it.”

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