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The History of IllustrationIllustration is artwork intended for explanation, elucidation, or adornment. It uses drawing and painting techniques in various media. The illustrator often focuses on developing conceptual problem solving skills through brainstorming exercises. There are also various technical and stylistic treatments used by artist to create images that stress subject more than form. These works can be used to display a wide range of subject matter and serve a variety of functions. These functions include: giving faces to characters in a story, displaying a number of examples of an item described in an academic textbook, visualizing step-wise sets of instructions in a technical manual, communicating subtle thematic tone in a narrative, linking brands to the ideas of human expression, or even evoking the viewer to feel emotion in such a way as to expand on the linguistic aspects of the narrative. The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric cave paintings. It has been concluded that the acoustics of caverns played an important role on the location of these paintings. There is likely to be more paintings by various people in locations of the caverns that have the best acoustics. Illuminated manuscripts were hand-drawn by the monks in the eras before the printing press. The variations of artworks from one script to another are the result from the artistic views of one monk versus another and also the available methods or media. During the 15th century, books illustrated with woodcut images became available. The main processes used for reproduction of illustrated works during the 16th and 17th centuries were engraving and etching. At the end of the 18th century, lithography allowed even better images to be reproduced. The American "golden age of illustration" lasted from the 1880s until shortly after World War I. This was a time when newspapers, mass market magazines, and illustrated books were the most dominant media available. Improvements in printing technology freed illustrators to experiment with color and new rendering techniques. The imagery the illustrators created was a portrait of American aspirations of the time. In Europe, golden age artists were influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and by such design-oriented movements as the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau, and Les Nabis. American works of this period was anchored by the Brandywine Valley tradition, begun by Howard Pyle and carried on by his students. Starting in the 1990s, traditional illustrators confronted a challenge from those illustrators who were using computer software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and CorelDRAW. The use of Wacom tablets and similar apparatus also increased the ability of drawing and painting directly in a computer. While illustrations have been previously considered just a small part of the creative and entertainment industries, they are becoming a new and significant factor in industries such as games, animation, advertising and publishing. Nowadays, because the entertainment and creative industries are very dynamic and have an easily-bored market, it can be especially difficult for a title to survive without creative and appealing images. This is because the imagination inside the images presents a more unique sensibility and helps manipulate reader's mood through their imagination. Today, there is a growing interest in collecting and admiring original artwork that was used as illustrations in books, magazines, posters, etc. Various museum exhibitions, magazines and art galleries have devoted space to the illustrators of the past. In the visual art world, illustrators have sometimes been considered less important in comparison with fine artists and graphic designers. But as the result of computer game and comic industry growth, illustrated works are becoming valued as popular and profitable art works that can acquire a wider market than the other two, especially in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and USA. Many illustrators have great artwork that is valued more than traditional artists.
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