Illustration 1: Key steps in illustration- Part 5: Words and pictures-Exercise 2: Editorial Illustration

Apr 30

Buy a newspaper with a supplement and go through cutting out any article that contains an illustration.

Notice the heading for each article and read the text that the illustration refers to. Make a mental note about the way the illustration relates to the text, how its ideas relate to the meaning of the piece, how it extends the content of the piece.

Analyse the type of illustration – is it decorative, conceptual, informational? Does it use metaphor to convey an idea or does it have a narrative base? Is it representational, abstract or diagrammatic?

Now imagine that you’ve have been commissioned by the paper to create an illustration. Your task is to provide a visual interpretation of one of the headings below:

How green is your food?
The best restaurant in town.
Loves me, loves me not
Throwing your money away
The object of my desire
Finding your family history
An interview with Melvin Bragg
Paris, still the best place on earth

You may find it useful either to find some text that suits the heading or write a few sentences yourself. Your interpretation can be as personal or as open as you like. For example, you may decide to go and draw an object or place or situation – or your might decide to create your image in a more interpretive or conceptual way.

If you’re confronted with several hundred words of text to illustrate you may find it hard to identify key areas of focus. Approach the task in a series of stages. Start by reading the article all the way through to get a sense of its entire meaning. Try not to think about your visual interpretation at this point. You might find it useful to sum up the article in a short series of sentences.

Next, go through the article with a highlighter pen and identify sentences and words which you consider to be important aspects of the text. Be conscious of connections between these words and the way in which one aspect of the text relates to another. If you’ve been given a heading by an editor, that might point you in the direction of the aspects that you’ll need to respond to in your illustration. Finally, read the text again with a sheet of paper to hand and sketch down ideas as you read through the article. Don’t draw self-consciously. Enjoy the process of visual brainstorming and be open to whatever results from it.

Make a list of words that describe the illustration you want to create. This should be as clear as the analysis you made of the illustrations in the newspaper or magazine and will help you decide how to proceed. Identify what the function of your image will be. Will it contain information, offer opinion, clarify or decorate the text?

Working within the size of one of the images that you analysed earlier, create a visual in response to your ideas. Be thorough within your processes of idea generation and development and refer often to your heading and text. Be realistic about your abilities at this stage and choose content according to both the meaning you want to communicate and your confidence in achieving this visually.

When you’ve created a line visual that you feel is appropriate for the article go to the artwork stage. If you can identify a palette and medium that you think sums up the sense of the content you may find that you can photocopy your visual and colour it in or scan it digitally and explore several colour variations before moving onto the final artwork.

Using materials and a stylistic approach which you feel comfortable with, translate your visual into artwork. You might decide to trace the image onto a surface appropriate to the media you’ve chosen, scale up the format you intend to work within and trace from an enlargement or draw the image freehand, using your visual as a guide.

In your learning log note down the types of editorial illustration you related to most positively, the early ideas you considered, and the process by which you decided what aspects of the text you wanted to focus on.

Nazario also has an illustration style that really interests me. He uses collage, focusing on portraits and people, manipulating faces on pastel backgrounds. His use of colour is something I aim to emulate, uses of beige, plain tones with pops of vibrant colour.

Michelle Thompson is an illustrator who uses a collage style. I really like her use of new and old ephemera to create her designs. The colour palettes are always interesting and tend to be quite vibrant. I also like the texture and use of abstract line work.

I looked through various newspapers I have and use for imagery/textures/inspo etc that are from different time periods. Ephemera from different eras really interests me and I have collected many magazines/newspapers over time. I looked through ‘Soviet Weekly’ editions from the 80s. I was interested to compare/contrast with more modern newspapers.

The illustrations here tended to be black and white (this is cheaper and less technology was easily available/cheap to print colour). I felt that they were quite affective in black and white and had to bed clearer, more bold and perhaps this is why they used satire or comedy to convey information.

They were mainly cartoon style representational illustrations that were also informative relative to the text. Surprisingly, when looking though the newer age newspapers (from 2021, peak covid era) they were similar in style, or at least their use. They were also comedic, cartoonish and informational. In the newer age newspapers there was more informational illustrations including photography and digitally edited parts including graphs and numbers but presented in a visually interesting way.

Both eras spoke to their audience The Times, Telegraph, Daily Mirror and Soviet weekly (1980s) had different audiences but used similar ways to present information through illustration. Perhaps this style is most affective when being consumed by a newspaper reader?

I numbered my initial thumbnails in the order of my favourite ideas. Referring to my words list and highlighted words from the text I had found I collated related images from old magazines and the internet. I wanted to convey the easy stereotype of someone with money- suit, jewellery etc, and create a dramatic abstract illustration representative of throwing money away. I kept in mind the text and how the image would relate to it/be placed within it.

I began by choosing the focal point of the imagery and distorting the persons face. I wanted it to look almost as if the abstraction/imagery was coming out of their heads. Inspired by Graziano’s work I began with a pastel/beige tone background upon which the dark coloured background really contrasted. This worked well with the ‘ups and downs’ and losses I wanted to convey through the imagery.

I produced the abstract marks using various pens and pencils, scanning and digitising them and testing with various compositions. I tried the different portraits initially thinking of going with the smiling character in hopes to exaggerate the positive/negative, up/down sense but preferred the more stoic expression of the person in the suit.

I printed my final composition, rescanned and edited with further layers digitally, creating my final illustration.

I chose ‘Throwing your money away’ to attempt an illustration for. I felt like this could evoke some interesting outcomes as there are various avenues the illustration could be taken to.

I listed words related to the theme, which helped me with coming up with ideas for compositions/visuals. I also found some text that I felt would work with the theme, again adding to my initial thumbnails of ideas. This text was ‘What was behind the crypto collapse?’ which I felt would be an interesting take on ‘Throwing your money away’ and could be inclusive of many concepts/visuals.