For as long as I can remember I have juggled ideas as pictures and ideas as words in my mind. Illustration seems to me to be a continual negotiation of these two ways of thinking.
Is drawing a form of writing? I think about how children find it easy to describe concepts in line before they learn to read and write. The latent metaphor in much of speech also reminds me how much of our thinking is visual.
The struggle between word and image continues to fascinate me in my work within the university, as I lecture on the history and theory of visual communication, and also as I watch how students’ learn to think as illustrators in the studio.
Illustrators are amphibious thinkers, able to swim in dreamlike images and also to survive in the arid land of rational thought.
Why do we illustrators never think of ourselves as ‘proper’ artists? Perhaps because we are more like writers, using images instead of words…
One Comment
Hi Desdemona,
‘Illustrators are amphibious thinkers…’
I read this today and thought it was a fantastic comment. I have been wondering around for 45 years experiencing something of this sentiment and you have just added it up. Thank you very much!
I teach graphics (but am an illustrator) and a few other things at Derby University. I am a senior Lecturer but do feel that they way I that I work, especially when linked with other staff is so different as I am a dreamer and like things to stay slightly fluid.
I do think that the amphibious nature of the illustrator is key. This dream like state offers a projection into how things will look or occur. An ‘arid land of rational thought’ is such a great image.
Best wishes,
Leo