Illustration typically refers to nonphotographic images that make a visual statement. What separates this specialized area of art from traditional fine art is that it is created for commercial reproduction. Some graphic designers never do the illustrations themselves; they buy the artwork from freelance illustrators. In my role as an illustrator, this is where I come in.

Clients or my boss may ask me to draw an image based on their guidelines, so it can be reproduced either in print or used in a digital format like in multimedia or the Internet. So far, I've had the pleasure for creating illustrations for a magazine, a children's book author, and myself for my own comic book. Illustrators use a wide variety of techiniques such as pen and ink, acrylics, gouache, collage, and computer-generated work. No matter what style is used, illustrators must be aware of technical issues such as color separations (CMYK or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) and printing methods. Those are what I think about before I present a design to a client if it is intended for print.

Web illustrations have a little more freedom when it comes to color, but I always consider how large the image file will be when it is loaded onto a web page. The illustrations displayed here were designed for print with 300 dpi (dots per inch) resolution. The graphics for this page were reduced to 72 dpi to make a smaller file size and for faster page loading on the Internet.