The history of illustration goes far back in time. As far back as Ancient Egypt, incantations and hymns written on papyri were accompanied by illustrations. They were created to illustrate the content of the texts. Antique examples found in manuscripts have survived to this day.
With the invention of printing (late 14th and early 15th centuries) the history of illustration began to develop rapidly. These illustrations were as black as the text itself because the boards on which the text was engraved were smeared with black ink. The vignette (from the French vignette) is a graphic image, completed in composition, small in size, of narrative or subject nature (often with symbolic meaning), became very popular in 18th-century books. Such illustrations were usually on the title page of a book and its first and last pages.
When photography was invented in 1837, the nature of illustrations changed dramatically: they were now directly related to photomechanical processes. Based on these processes, new ways of obtaining book illustrations were found: zincography (stroke drawing on zinc board), autotype (reproduction of drawings in halftones) and tricolor printing (reproduction of color illustrations). In the 19th century, it was not imagery but realism that came first.
With the invention of the photomechanical method of printing in the 19th century, artistic possibilities increased. Illustrations were able to convey any pictorial or graphic technique (pencil, pen, watercolor, gouache, oil, etc.). Artists were able to use and combine a wide variety of artistic materials.
A tangible contribution to the creation and development of the early 20th century book illustrations have contributed artists of the World of Art Association Benoit, Bakst, LSE Lanceret, Bilibin, MV Dobuzhinsky and others. Thanks to these outstanding artists book illustration became not only an integral part of the literary work, but also stood out as an independent form of fine art.
Bilibin’s drawing is characterized by graphic representation. Beginning his work on the drawing, Bilibin sketched a sketch of a future composition. The black ornamental lines clearly delineate the colors, which set the volume and perspective in the plane of the sheet. Filling the watercolor colors of the black and white graphic image only emphasize the given lines. Bilibin generously uses ornaments to frame his drawings.
Anna Anderson (1874-1930) was a Scottish illustrator.
During her successful career she illustrated many children’s books. Her work is in the modern style. Anderson’s work greatly influenced many famous English book artists — Charlie Robinson, Jessie King, Mabel Lucy Attwell — as well as her own husband, the British illustrator Alan Wright.
Sir John Tenniel was an English artist and cartoonist; the first illustrator of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (see Appendix 2 Figure 1) and Alice in Wonderland. At the writer’s request, he created 42 illustrations that are still considered perfect, canonical, and unsurpassed. One can see this by looking at the pages of Carroll’s first book he designed. Very interesting and vivid characters, beautiful compositional solutions, and a harmonious relationship between the style of the text and page design and the illustrations themselves.
The sketches of the drawings were made on paper and then transferred to wooden forms and their precise electroformed casts, from which the printing was done.