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What is the difference between drawing and illustration? While mankind has enjoyed the act of drawing for ages, illustration can be differentiated from drawing as it is more complex and targeted for business usage. Marketing companies, publishers, and marketing departments rely upon a commercial artist to create illustrations in order to sell products & services by communicating messages through text, imagery, and visual explanations.

Drawing is a form of self-expression that enables an artist to display an image they have created for personal or social enjoyment. Whereas illustration is professional artwork created by an artist for business purposes. Illustrations are often paired with descriptive text to elaborate on a product or service for the viewing audience’s benefit.

How do I start making illustrations? While each illustrator brings their own approach to creating an illustration, even artists using digital tools will often begin their task by reading an assignment in order to contemplate the text that is to be represented and transformed into imagery. Next, most illustrators will then use drawing pencils and sketchbooks to compile thumbnails of the images first imagined. Thereafter, an illustrator will develop the pencil drawings favored most, using coloring pens, or gel pens in order to invigorate the images with splashes of color. 

Once the illustrator has paired down the colored images worthy to be refined, he/she will then draw those select images again with greater detail. Once those two images are clean, they will use alcohol or acrylic markers, color pencils, or Inkonic Fineliner Pens to further develop the image and deliver a clean, polished version of the illustration. Depending on the feel of the piece, the illustrator may desire a soft more dreamy version, which watercolor pencils or Real Brush Pens will produce. And if a commission is required to be digital, illustrators will often use the refined drawing as a reference or scan to be uploaded onto a computer’s digital illustration program.

What do illustrators draw with? While there are a variety of tools that illustrators utilize for drawing, the vast majority of illustrators use light pencil lines to develop compositions within drawing pads. This allows the drawing to be altered if the direction of the image develops in another direction. The artist’s drawing is transformed into a commercial illustration, therein meeting the communication goals of the assignment, when the image is refined (and eventually finalized) through the use of tools, like: colored pencils, acrylic markers, or Real Brush Pens, etc.