illustration

art

Learn about this topic in these articles:

drawing

  • Berthe Morisot: The Artist's Sister, Edma, with Her Daughter, Jeanne
    In drawing: Applied drawings

    …similarly ambivalent nature is the illustrative drawing that perhaps does not go beyond a simple pictorial rendition of a literary description but because of its specific formal execution may still satisfy the highest artistic demands. Great artists have again and again illustrated Bibles, prayer books, novels, and literature of all…

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magazines

  • Gutenberg Bible
    In history of publishing: Illustrated magazines

    …to notice the effect of illustrations on sales and grasp their possibilities was a newsagent in Nottingham, Herbert Ingram, who moved to London in 1842 and began publishing The Illustrated London News, a weekly consisting of 16 pages of letterpress and 32 woodcuts. It was successful from the start, winning…

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printing

  • printing press
    In printing: Reproduction of illustrations

    The first process for reproducing illustrations was xylography, using woodcuts that printed in relief and that therefore could be combined with letterpress, the picture blocks and the pieces of type for texts being locked into the same form. As early as the second half…

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  • printing press
    In printing: Scope of letterpress

    It produces good reproduction of illustrations on sheet-fed machines, with these two reservations, that screening prevents the reproduction of pure white, and it is not possible to use more than four colours without risking a speckled moiré pattern. Roll-fed printing still preserves a good sharpness in the text but produces…

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woodcuts

  • In photoengraving: History of photoengraving

    …the nonimage areas of an illustration were removed by carving them from the surface of a flat wood block. The oldest known illustration printed from a wooden block was a Buddhist scroll discovered in 1866, in Korea. While the dating of the print is not exact, it is believed to…

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