Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

In previous articles, I argued for the importance of interpreting without rushing the story, of respecting the reader’s point in the narrative, and of understanding that a poorly placed illustration—one that betrays the text, pushes the reader forward, or delivers a visual spoiler—can ruin an entire narrative experience.

Having stated that, nothing that follows in this article contradicts that position. On the contrary, it presupposes it.

Once those basic rules of the craft are understood, a more complex zone emerges: one in which the illustrator, fully aware of what they are doing, can “betray” the story, the narrative, or the reading experience. They can anticipate without causing harm. They can even add meaning through carefully controlled anticipation.

The illustrator can be a traitor to the reading, to the text, and to the reader if they do their job poorly… but they can also become a “good traitor,” enhancing the narrative, if they use the “Correct Visual Spoiler.”

This text does not propose allowing visual spoilers lightly. It proposes thinking about when, how, and why an illustration can move ahead without betraying the reading… or “betraying it well.”

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Prolepsis in Illustration and the Dilemma of Anticipation

In narrative theory, the term prolepsis refers to a temporal leap forward: the anticipatory presentation of an event, piece of information, or meaning that, in the linear order of the story, should appear later. It is a classic device in literature and film, used to generate tension, expectation, or a more complex reading of the narrative.

When transferred to the field of editorial illustration, the concept becomes especially delicate. Because the image (unlike text) impacts the viewer immediately, without the sequential mediation of reading. Where text can dose information, the image bursts in directly.

That is why speaking of prolepsis in illustration cannot be done lightly. Not every visual anticipation is legitimate, nor does every advance of information necessarily enrich the story. In many cases, the opposite happens: the image reveals too soon what the text is patiently building.

One might speak, I think, of the “Deferred Visual Spoiler.” That is, an image that only reveals its true meaning later, once the reader has advanced further in the text or even upon a second reading of the work.

In that case, the image does not betray the initial reading, because it cannot be fully understood at that first moment. The information is there, but it is not yet evident to the reader.

However, I believe that calling it a “Deferred Visual Spoiler” is not entirely accurate, given the strong negative connotations of the word “spoiler.” Therefore, we will refer to this phenomenon in illustration by another name: Visual Foreshadowing .

Visual Foreshadowing

The term “Visual Foreshadowing” is not something I invented; it is used, though not always academically, in other artistic fields. In audiovisual narrative, for example, there is a widely used technique called foreshadowing: the early introduction of elements that will take on full meaning later. Something similar occurs in editorial illustration, albeit with its own characteristics derived from the language of static visual imagery. We will apply this concept to the illustrator’s practice and adopt the term: Visual Foreshadowing.

We will call Visual Foreshadowing the conscious decision by the illustrator to introduce visual elements that anticipate a future meaning in the story without revealing it, while respecting the reader’s current point in the narrative.

Just as foreshadowing operates in different forms, we can say that Visual Foreshadowing works in roughly these ways:

Subtle Visual Foreshadowing
(The most common and, generally, the most elegant.)

• Secondary objects.

• Ambiguous gestures.

• Shadows, framing, spatial tensions.

• Elements that do not demand immediate attention.

The reader absorbs these details even if they do not consciously register them.

Symbolic Visual Foreshadowing
(Operates at the level of atmosphere and metaphor.)

• Use of color.

• Repetition of shapes.

• Visual moods or climates.

• Recurring graphic motifs.

It does not anticipate concrete events, but rather meanings, emotions, or tones.

Direct Visual Foreshadowing (Risky)

As should be clear from the previous articles, being direct requires exceptional skill.

• It can border on a blatant betrayal of the text.

• It usually only works if it does not provide immediately decodable information.

If poorly executed, Direct Visual Foreshadowing becomes a Visual Spoiler.

Direct visual foreshadowing can work when the revealing illustration appears almost at the same time as the text confirms it. For example: imagine we are reading about a fight between two characters on the rooftop of a skyscraper, without yet knowing the outcome. On the next page, the illustration shows one of the characters falling into the void. If, upon turning the page, the text immediately describes that fall right after the illustration, the impact can be powerful and the sense of spoiling is diminished or eliminated.

On the other hand, if the text takes a page or more to reveal the fall, the illustration turns into a pure spoiler.

Even in the direct case, interest can be maintained if the image partially conceals the key information. For example, if the illustration shows the fall but hides the identity of who is falling, the reader is left intrigued to discover who the victim is. Thus, the foreshadowing anticipates the event (the fall) but preserves suspense regarding its emotional or narrative consequences.

Nevertheless, in my view, the direct approach is not advisable as a regular strategy.

Visual Spoiler vs. Visual Foreshadowing

Let’s review the differences. In (non-direct) visual foreshadowing, concrete information is not revealed; instead, it evokes a sense of meaning, an atmosphere, an emotion, or certain details that function as subtle clues. At the moment of their appearance, these clues are usually indecipherable or only partially comprehensible to the reader.

The visual spoiler, by contrast, delivers narrative certainty: it directly reveals a fact or outcome that the reader should not yet know.

An illustration can anticipate without advancing, suggest without revealing, and prepare the reader without betraying the text. That is not a spoiler: it is prefiguration. It is visual foreshadowing.

Not every visual advance is a mistake, but almost every narrative error stems from a poorly timed advance.

Visual Foreshadowing does not try to explain; it seeks to suggest. It introduces a minimal tension. Its effectiveness lies not in the present, but in the future; it works in retrospect. Only later, when the reader has completed the journey of the story, does that image acquire new meaning. It does not hinder the reading; it expands it without imposing a direct interpretation and preserves suspense.

The Visual Spoiler, on the other hand, betrays. It tells before the text has told. It explains what should be discovered through reading. It is understood immediately, and precisely for that reason it fails. By anticipating literally, it cancels suspense, reduces ambiguity, and impoverishes the experience. The image should accompany the reading process, but the visual spoiler replaces it.

The fundamental difference lies in the reader’s point in the narrative. Visual Foreshadowing respects it, even while playing with the time of the story. The Visual Spoiler ignores it completely. Some might call this lack of respect for the text and the reader “boldness” or “creative risk,” but in most cases it is nothing more than a simple lack of craftsmanship.

The reader’s point in the narrative should not be negotiated. It should be interpreted. To illustrate from the end when the reader is still at the beginning is not depth; it is narrative discourtesy.

When the image foreshadows, it accompanies. When it spoils, it betrays poorly. The distance between the two is ethical, narrative, and professional.

Risk, Craft, and Responsibility

Every visual anticipation involves risk. And every risk in illustration is, ultimately, also an editorial decision. It is not always advisable to anticipate. It is not always necessary. And often it is not even appropriate.

But to flatly deny this possibility would be to reduce illustration to a merely confirmatory role, incapable of engaging in deep dialogue with the text. In the end, the problem is not the Visual Spoiler itself; the problem is employing it without a proper understanding of the craft.

Before learning how to move ahead, the illustrator must first learn how to wait.
Only those who understand the timing of reading can allow themselves to play with it without ruining it.

In the next article, I will begin examining several images that some qualify as illustrations, although I reject that designation, and I will argue in detail the reasons that support my position.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

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Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

As I stated in the article “The Illustrator as a Professional Reader” and “Editorial Illustration Does NOT Beautify: It Interprets,” the illustrator’s interpretive ability and their deep, comprehensive reading of the text form the fundamental basis for deciding what to illustrate and how to do it.

One of the most delicate decisions in editorial illustration has nothing to do with style, technique, or composition, but rather with the exact moment of the story being illustrated. Not every illustration should reflect the overall meaning of the story. In many cases, it should respond solely to what the reader knows (and feels) at that precise point in the reading.

To illustrate is not to anticipate. To illustrate is to accompany without pushing the reader along the narrative journey.

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The Oracular Illustrator

The oracle is that figure who, through a deep and revealing reading, is capable of anticipating and glimpsing the future.

When an illustrator works on a narrative text, they usually know the ending in advance. They know the twists, the revelations, and the characters’ true intentions. In that sense, the illustrator becomes an “oracular” figure: they possess privileged knowledge of the future that the reader does not yet know. However, this knowledge is a professional privilege, not a narrative permission.

The reader who advances page by page does not know what will happen next. They experience the story from a place of uncertainty, suspicion, fear, or anticipation. If the illustration introduces information that the text has not yet revealed, the image stops accompanying the reading and begins to condition it.

In those cases, the illustration does not illuminate: it spoils.

The Correction That Anticipates

On one occasion, I was illustrating a tense scene: a character felt trapped, watched, and vulnerable. At that point, the text had not yet revealed who was dangerous and who was not. The threat was ambiguous. That ambiguity was precisely where its power lay.

My decision was to illustrate that ambiguity. I built the scene from the character’s (and the reader’s) perception: confinement, shadows, tension, and imprecise gestures. There were no certainties, only perception.

From the editorial team came a specific observation: to modify the gesture of one of the characters to make them clearly harmless, even fearful. The intention was understandable: knowing the outcome, that character should not “appear” dangerous.

But there was the problem. That outcome did not yet exist for the reader.

The illustration, as it was proposed to be corrected, advanced information that the text had not yet provided. It revealed something the narrative had deliberately postponed. It was not a drawing problem; it was a problem of narrative timing.

In that case, illustrating the character “correctly” was, in reality, visually spoiling the story. It took away the reader’s ability to suspect. It resolved too soon a conflict that the text was still building.

I maintain that an illustration should not always respond to the total meaning of the story, but to the exact point at which it is inserted.

Illustrating from the future of the story can ruin the present of the reading.

The Still Image Also Narrates in Sequence

A book is not read all at once. It is read with pauses, advances, and regressions. Editorial illustration is therefore also temporal. It exists in relation to what has already happened and what has not yet occurred.

Showing too soon that someone is not a threat, softening a scene that the text presents as unsettling, or visually reassuring the reader prematurely has nothing to do with an aesthetic decision — it is a narrative decision.

And every narrative decision has consequences.

In the end, I accepted the modification. Not because I was convinced it was the best narrative solution, but because I also understand something else: illustration is a craft embedded in an editorial mechanism, not an autonomous and isolated personal gesture.

This does not invalidate the reflection. On the contrary, it makes it even more necessary.

Because these situations reveal something fundamental about the illustrator’s work:

We do not only illustrate scenes — we manage information.

Illustration as a Temporal Experience

To illustrate does not consist of over-explaining or correcting the reading of the text. It consists of accompanying it on its journey. Sometimes, that means sustaining doubt, discomfort, or ambiguity. It means holding the mystery.

If, as illustrators, we also manage information (the temporal experience, the reading experience), we must ensure that when illustrating a specific scene located at a precise point in the story, the illustration responds to the internal logic of that moment, not to the later explanation. The illustrator does not depict “what is” in its entirety, but what it seems to be for the person who is reading at that point.

Not showing something is not an omission due to lack of ideas. It is a conscious decision.

To illustrate is also to respect the reading experience. In these cases, to illustrate is to wait.

There are works that admit (or even require) conceptual illustrations — images that condense the general meaning of the work or symbolically anticipate its resolution. But not all works function that way.

Revealing too soon, anticipating moments, etc., is usually a bad decision. Illustrating from the future of the story can ruin the reader’s present.

The professional illustrator must ask themselves:

What does the reader know at this point?

What do they suspect?

What do they fear?

What can they still not know?

Answering these questions incorrectly means intervening in the text improperly.

To Illustrate Is to Read with Responsibility

The critical and interpretive reading that the illustrator performs is key to decision-making in the illustration process. These kinds of decisions are rarely visible to those who see the finished book. Yet they are part of the craft. They are choices that determine whether an illustration accompanies, illuminates, or interferes.

To illustrate does not consist of making an image that is “correct” in aesthetic, technical, moral, or explanatory terms, but one that is just in narrative terms.

A good illustration does not anticipate answers — it sustains questions. An illustration that gets ahead ends up betraying the narrative.

However, it is possible that an illustrator can indeed be a good traitor… we will see that in the next article.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

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Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

In the editorial field, reading is not a passive act. Reading is interpreting, selecting, and prioritizing. Under this premise, the illustrator is not merely an image producer: above all, he is a professional reader.

He does not read like the final reader, who lets himself be carried away by the story. Nor does he read like the critic, who evaluates the work from an analytical distance. The illustrator reads with a concrete purpose: to transform a text into a coherent visual experience without damaging or diminishing it.

Illustration begins long before the drawing. It begins with reading.

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Reading to Interpret, Not Just to Reproduce

The illustrator produces images — that is a fact. In essence, he is an “image maker.” What he is not (or should not be) is a mere automatic producer, a visual executor who translates words into images without analysis or judgment. (That is something any AI can already do.)

A purely literal reading is not enough for illustration. Converting words directly into images almost always leads to redundancy or obviousness. The illustrator must read between the lines, detect narrative tensions, silences, atmospheres, contradictions, and subtexts.

The illustrator works with sentences, scenes, and concepts, but he does not limit himself to them. He goes beyond literalness to reach the deeper meaning. When reading remains solely literal, the illustration becomes redundant, shallow, or unnecessary. This does not mean that literalness is invalid: in many cases it is pertinent and effective. The problem arises when any deeper analysis of the content is abandoned.

The illustrator does not graphically copy a text, nor is he a kind of “visual scribe.” The illustrator reads and interprets graphically.

That is why the illustrator does not work only with sentences; he works with the possible meanings of the text.

Every illustration begins with an initial question: What is this text really saying?

Once that central question is answered, many others arise. Some are more formal and descriptive: Where does the action take place? What are the characters like? In what era does the story unfold? What elements deserve to be highlighted?

However, the most powerful questions are those of interpretation:

• What is the text not saying? What issues remain tacit or “floating in the air”?

• What is the author’s deeper intention? Are there explicit or implicit symbols?

• Does the text allow for multiple interpretations?

• What emotions does the text provoke in me, and what emotions is it likely to awaken in the reader?

These and many other interpretive questions allow the illustrator to go beyond the surface and perform a true analysis of the text’s meaning. They help understand the core issue, not just its external form.

Over the years, I have taken courses and read extensively about hermeneutics — the art and theory of interpreting texts, discourses, and any human manifestation loaded with meaning. I remain fascinated by this discipline. I love being able to dissect every layer of a text, objectively analyze its different levels of meaning, explore its ramifications, and finally play with all that material to find the visual form I consider most appropriate for illustrating it.

In a future article, I will expand more practically on the application of hermeneutics to illustration. For now, it is enough to state the essential: the illustrator must become a “professional reader.”

Reading as Decision-Making

Reading professionally implies making decisions. And every visual decision is, in essence, a reading decision — an editorial decision.

As I mentioned in a previous article, these decisions are not decorative, nor are they merely technical. That is why two different illustrators, reading the same text, will produce radically different images. Not because they “draw differently,” but because their reading — and therefore their interpretation — will be different.

Among many other things, the illustrator decides:

• Which moment of the story deserves to be visualized.

• What information to reveal, what to hide, and what to suggest.

• From which point of view the scene will be constructed.

• What kind of atmosphere will accompany the text, among others.

The image fixes an interpretation. Once published, that visual reading will likely accompany the text for a long time. That is why illustrating is not an innocent act. The illustrator assumes a responsibility similar to that of the editor: to guide the reader’s experience.

In my view, it is very difficult for someone to develop as a text illustrator if they are not, first and foremost, a habitual reader (and why not, also a demanding one). It is not about accumulating books or pretending to be cultured, but about acquiring, through deep reading, the skills of comprehension and sensitivity necessary for illustration.

Those who limit themselves to consuming short texts from social media (posts on X, Instagram carousels, etc.) also limit their toolkit for the profession: they reduce their visual language, impoverish their capacity for understanding, and ultimately constrict their ability to express themselves visually.

Reading Defines the Craft

The illustrator does not simply add images to a text, like hanging paintings to decorate a room. No — he intervenes in the text. Illustration is part of the reading system.

And it can only be done honestly by someone who has read with depth.

Here I return to the distinction that grounds this space: “drawing is not illustrating, and illustrating is not drawing.” The title of “illustrator” is not granted by technique, style, or graphic skill. It is defined above all by the ability to read a content, understand its purpose, its context, and its audience, and to translate that reading into a functional image.

That is why the illustrator is, first and foremost, a trained reader. A reader who works with images, but thinks in terms of meaning.

Illustration demands reading. So we could say that illustration does not begin by drawing or painting: it begins with reading.

In the next article, I will address a topic we should avoid when illustrating a text.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

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Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

For a long time, editorial illustration has been presented (and sometimes defended) as an ornamental element, an aesthetic layer meant to beautify the text, make it more appealing, or facilitate its consumption. This idea, still prevalent in many commercial discourses, is not only incomplete but profoundly reductive. This is one of the reasons why illustrators are sometimes dismissed or not recognized as AUTHORS. But the reality is that, in the editorial context, illustration does not beautify: it interprets.

Well, I should say: Illustration does NOT JUST beautify: it interprets.

Interpreting implies taking a position. It involves reading, selecting, omitting, emphasizing. In short, it means making decisions that directly affect the reading experience. That is why every image published in a book is not neutral; it is a visual reading of the content, as loaded with meaning as any prologue, footnote, or editorial decision.

But let’s make it clear from the start: this interpretation is not free or arbitrary. It is not an autonomous expressive gesture. It is conditioned by a commission, by an audience, by a medium/support, by specific content, and by a concrete purpose. In that sense, it is a professional interpretation, inherent to a craft.

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Illustration as an Act of Reading

Illustrating is not translating words into images in a purely literal way. It is reading the text with visual tools. The editorial illustrator does not work solely with isolated phrases, but with tensions, silences, subtexts, and narrative rhythms. Where the text suggests, the image can clarify, expand, tension, or even open a new layer of meaning.

From this perspective, illustration is an act of reading comparable to that of the editor. Both read the content with a common goal: to build a coherent, meaningful, and honest reading experience with the work. The difference between them lies in the language used.

Visible and Invisible Decisions

Every illustration involves a chain of decisions that are rarely evident to the reader, but which profoundly determine how the book will be read, for example:

• What is shown and what is left off-frame.

• From what point of view the scene is observed.

• Which moment of the narrative is frozen and which is omitted.

• What emotional atmosphere is constructed.

These decisions are not technical or decorative; they are editorial decisions. An illustration can accelerate or slow down the reading, reinforce an emotion or plant a doubt, close an interpretation or leave it open. In that sense, illustrating is intervening in the content, not merely beautifying or adorning it.

The Risk of Illustration as Ornament

When illustration is reduced to ornament, the book loses an opportunity. The image stops dialoguing with its companion to limit itself to repeating it or, worse still, neutralizing it. This happens frequently in projects where a safe, predictable aesthetic is prioritized, designed not to discomfort or demand too much from the reader.

The problem is conceptual, more than aesthetic. An illustration that only confirms what the content already says does not contribute reading; it is a simple echo. In contrast, an image that interprets introduces a productive distance between what is read and what is seen. That distance is, very often, where thought is born.

Illustration and Editorial Responsibility

Choosing an illustrator is not choosing a style; it is choosing a gaze. Each illustrator reads in a different way, and that reading will remain fixed in the book for years, perhaps decades. That is why the choice of an illustrator is a first-order editorial decision.

The question should not be whether an illustration “looks nice” in the book, but whether it reads well. Whether it understands the content, dialogues with it, respects it without blindly obeying it. Good editorial illustration does not underline: it interprets.

Accompanying Is Not Adorning

It is worth insisting on a key point: illustration accompanies. But accompanying does not mean being secondary or decorative. Accompanying, in illustrative terms, is existing in relation. Illustration does not live in solitude nor claim autonomy; it is part of the same system of meaning alongside its content.

Thinking of illustration as a later addition is to ignore its true weight in the construction of the book. Text and image do not compete; they condition each other mutually. Illustration accompanies the content in the same way that good editing accompanies a text. It does not impose itself, but it is decisive.

Illustrating Is a Profession

Illustrating is not saying what one wants, but what the project needs. That is a central difference between illustrating and simply drawing or painting. The illustrator works within limits: conceptual, editorial, technical, and temporal. It is within those margins that the creativity proper to the profession is exercised.

When the image interprets from that framework, the book gains depth. It becomes re-readable. It invites pausing, going back, discovering something that was not obvious at first glance. That is, ultimately, one of the great values of editorial illustration: expanding the reading rather than just beautifying it.

In the next article, I will address a characteristic that every good illustrator should have.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

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Author > Oscar Senonez /

The 21st Century Illustrationist Manifesto – Now in English

Original title in Spanish: El Manifiesto ilustracionista del Siglo XXI (o Mi Manifiesto ilustracionista del Siglo XXI)

This manifesto was born in 2023 as my personal declaration — written and illustrated by hand, with zero artificial intelligence involved. It’s a short book, a straightforward statement from an illustrator who’s been in the trenches for over 20 years, watching the tech hype swallow everything in its path.

The original is in Spanish and remains available for free download here: Download the full Spanish PDF (or from my website: OscarSenonez.com)

Now, for the first time, I’m sharing the complete English translation right here in this post. No summaries, no cuts — the whole thing, point by point, as raw and unfiltered as the original.

Why translate it? Because the conversation about human art, authorship, and the traps of “artificial intelligence” isn’t just a Spanish-speaking issue. It’s global. If you’re an artist, illustrator, creator — or just someone tired of the techno-optimist bullshit — this is for you.

Read it. Disagree if you want. But above all, think about it with your own human mind.

If the first postulate hits you hard — 1. Art is HUMAN, only.

— then welcome. You’re in the right place.

Let’s go.

- ⚠️ Heads up: This is a long read ahead – grab a coffee! ☕ -

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# MY “ILLUSTRATIONIST” MANIFESTO of the 21st Century
(“About the Artist vs. the Machine” / “From Mega Techno-Optimism to Common Sense”)

By (“Oscar Senonez”)

(”======”)

“What happens to us in the future? What, do we become assholes or somethin’?”

- Marty McFly

# Table of Contents
====

Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Introduction
 Section 1.1: Ideas Have Consequences
 Section 1.2: Why an “Illustrationist” Manifesto?

Chapter 2
Chapter 2: POSTULATES
 Section 2.1: Art is HUMAN, only
 Section 2.2: Illustration is HUMAN, only
 Section 2.3: The Author LIVES and is HUMAN
 Section 2.4: The Artificial is NOT intelligent
 Section 2.5: The Artificial is a TRAP

Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Final Words

====

# Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Introduction

Section 1.1: Ideas Have Consequences

We can elaborate, present, and teach interesting ideas—or at least ones that sound interesting—and we can also build things based on those ideas. What we can never do is escape the consequences, whether beneficial or catastrophic, that those ideas inevitably bring with them.

While the artistic community reels in shock from the rapid advance of so-called “AI” and the violation of Artists’ rights, few realize the deeper impact and the underlying problem in this era of change dominated by the virtual and the artificial. We’re only seeing the tip of a gigantic iceberg.

Since time immemorial, humanity has felt an irresistible urge to overcome the limitations of our physical and mental existence, exploring the possibility of a utopian future full of perfection. This drive has generated important and valuable advances, but it has also brought with it a philosophical and dogmatic system on which to base itself and with which to preach a discourse of technological optimism that borders on the most delirious fanaticism. This is how movements like “Transhumanism” are born (which even has its own church), supported and promoted by mega-millionaires and celebrated throughout Silicon Valley. Movements whose aspiration is to “improve” the human condition through advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology, to the point where every trace of humanity is eliminated to make way for a “new non-human being,” calling that supposed improvement process: “evolution.”

We are witnessing the most ambitious anthropological experiment in history, where the fusion of MAN/MACHINE threatens to discontinue us, render us obsolete, DEhumanize us.

Nevertheless, as artists, we should question whether this steroid-fueled Techno-Optimism approach—centered on technology as a means to achieve “human improvement” (and in the process DEhumanize us)—is the right direction for humanity.

We should consider that, instead of pursuing “perfection” and the elimination of what defines us as humans, it is necessary to value our ontology and our work.

(Because if the human is obsolete, then so are art and its author.)

Draw your own practical conclusions for the artist’s work, for the artistic voice, for rights, and all related issues.

Humanity is unique and valuable in itself. As human beings, we are aware of our own existence, we have the capacity to feel complex emotions, we are social beings who need meaningful relationships and connections to thrive. We are also inventive creatures, capable of making art and other forms of cultural expression, of making ethical judgments, taking free decisions, and other things that differentiate us from machines.

These are some of the characteristics that make humanity irreplaceable and invaluable. The complexity of human experience cannot be replicated by technology, and the loss of these characteristics would be a tremendous loss for humanity itself—and especially for art.

Algorithms and machines can produce consistent results, but they lack the variety and complexity of our experiences.

(“The value of technology lies in its ability to improve the quality of human life, but it should not be used as a way to replace or eliminate humanity as we know it.”)

Instead of focusing on the elimination of our essence, we must value and celebrate our unique humanity. We must aim to build a world that values and appreciates it, rather than seeking to completely erase our peculiarities.

As artists, we should be the first to embrace the crucial role that art plays in valuing humanity, because there is no art without humanity. Art explores that human experience and connects with others in a way that technology will never be able to.

The academic and writer Miklos Lukacs warns in one of his books, with complete common sense, that with this fusion of MAN/MACHINE, the human being would also transform their experience and relationship with their environment, affecting everything they do.

(“How will this affect Art and Artists?”)

Even now, without reaching that full fusion, we have normalized a language in which we humanize machines and interact with them as if they were people (and there are those who say “thank you” to ChatGPT for providing the desired answers), and there are those who dare to compare artistic work with the image-generation process of MidJourney.

(We must be capable of USING technologies to our benefit and NOT being ABSORBED by them, to the point of disappearing.)

In the 1980s, even the famous “artificial intelligence” prototype from the TV series, Max Headroom, wondered aloud:

“I d-don’t want to be gloomy, gloomy… but what does the future hold?”

Section 1.2: Why an “Illustrationist” Manifesto?

Seeing the accelerated advance of these ANTIhuman ideas, I considered it appropriate to write down my stance on all this and call it: My “ILLUSTRATIONIST” MANIFESTO of the 21st Century.

As far as I know, there is NO artistic manifesto called “illustrationism,” nor does this Manifesto of mine pretend to be one. It’s more a declaration of concepts than anything else—a manifestation of my humble rebellion and personal protest against the world that’s coming.

This Manifesto consists, for now, of five (5) Postulates. I don’t rule out adding more later (or should I say “Upgrade”?). You can join me in this Manifesto if you at least firmly agree with the first Postulate.

Some people call “illustrationism” the historical period known as the “Enlightenment,” also called the “Age of Lights.” This Manifesto has NOTHING to do with that. It’s called “illustrationist” for the simple reason that I work in illustration, and I’m writing this in my capacity as an illustrator.

Is it pretentious? Maybe… another alternative would have been to call it “The Senonez Manifesto,” which could sound just as pretentious.

Anyway, it might sound pretentious, but I justify it by saying that it’s surely NOT as pretentious as believing that machines make Art.

# Chapter 2
Chapter 2: POSTULATES

Section 2.1: Art is HUMAN, only

This statement is, in reality, a truism—a self-evident truth—and just a few years ago, saying something like this would have been laughed at for its sheer obviousness.

However, I believe that affirming this “obviousness” today constitutes an almost revolutionary act, because this affirmation goes against the underlying discourse of contemporary Mega Techno-Optimism. A discourse that is gradually becoming the dominant one. A Mega Techno-Optimism that believes, with the faith of a mystic, that technology will one day abolish death and fantasizes about machines acquiring feelings on their own.

The human being is the ONLY species capable of creating ART. ART is one more form of expression, unique to humans, through which we communicate. An elevated form of communication due to the complex characteristics of the medium. ART is also, at the same time, a product of the relationship the ARTIST has with their environment and a reflection of their thoughts or their “inner world.”

But ART is NOT JUST expressing oneself or the sensible manifestation of the ARTIST. ART is simultaneously the use of technique, the interaction with the materials of creation, the making of FREE decisions in the development process. It is both intentional planning and the use of chance as part of the elaboration. It is the artist’s opinion, their affirmations, objections, negations, their searches, encounters, misencounters and losses, their judgments and prejudices, their ethics, their morality or immorality, their purposes or mispurposes, their beliefs, skepticisms or disbeliefs, and many other things that pertain to the human species.

ART is a cluster of complex issues that all play together at the same time to give rise to the artistic work. Those issues, with their complex interplay, are IMPOSSIBLE to replicate by any machine. Because ART comes from REALITY, from the human being having CLOSE CONTACT with REALITY, both internal and external.

The Artificial, the Virtual, the Mechanical can only IMITATE without ever generating ART and without ever being ARTIST.

Section 2.2: Illustration is HUMAN, only

To address this point, I find it necessary to make some clarifications.

ILLUSTRATION, contrary to what some believe, is NOT a “minor art,” and ILLUSTRATION, also contrary to what some believe, is NOT just about drawing and painting or creating a pretty picture.

The fact that ILLUSTRATION has been so mistreated—whether by editors, agencies, and others who consider ILLUSTRATION a mere ornament for their productions, or by low-skilled drawers who call themselves ILLUSTRATORS without even knowing what it’s about—is NO excuse to keep reducing ILLUSTRATION to such miserable conceptual conditions.

Many years ago, I created this phrase that has become somewhat popular:
“Drawing is NOT Illustrating, and Illustrating is NOT Drawing.”

I didn’t say it with the intention of “elevating” ILLUSTRATION above drawing in some nonexistent hierarchy of ART and its mediums, but rather with the aim of DIFFERENTIATING and CLARIFYING that ILLUSTRATION is a CRAFT and that it requires other skills beyond just knowing how to draw or paint.

To ILLUSTRATE means “to illuminate,” as the dictionary would say: “To shed LIGHT on understanding.” So, to ILLUSTRATE is to COMMUNICATE CLEARLY A MESSAGE about whatever is being illustrated.

A true ILLUSTRATION requires an ARTIST (the same ARTIST mentioned in Postulate 1).

ILLUSTRATION is a CRAFT with its own characteristics. A CRAFT that, although it has a significant commercial side, does NOT lack ARTISTIC value because of that.

In summary, ILLUSTRATION is an ARTIST dedicating themselves to a CRAFT—the CRAFT of illustrating.

Misunderstood ILLUSTRATION is simple decoration for profit.

Well-understood ILLUSTRATION is AUTHORSHIP. It is an AUTHOR, the ILLUSTRATOR, bringing THEIR VOICE to whatever they illustrate.

An ILLUSTRATOR is EVERYTHING that an ARTIST is, with the addition that they work within the specific limitations of the CRAFT of illustrating, in a professional framework that involves exchanges, rights, and obligations. And within those limitations and that professional framework, they express their VOICE, their AUTHORSHIP, their ART.

Just as ART is HUMAN only, illustration is too.

The Artificial, the Virtual, the Mechanical can only IMITATE and PRETEND, without ever generating a true ILLUSTRATION and without ever being an ILLUSTRATOR.

Section 2.3: The Author LIVES and is HUMAN

Toward the end of the 1960s—already last century—Roland Barthes would declare the “Death of the Author.” A critical analysis, in the form of an essay, of Barthes’ text is not the purpose of this postulate and would far exceed the scope of this Manifesto.

I will limit myself to stating some observations and affirming that the announcement of the “Death of the Author” was a premature one, more laden with “Artificiality” than with Reality.

Whether one considers the “Death of the Author” as something real or something symbolic, in both cases it carries an enormous weight of subjectivity, and such a consideration would only apply to the individual who thinks so, and not to the rest. The pretension of ELIMINATING the Author, for whatever reasons, is in itself a subjective construction. The “Death of the Author” can only be sustained in discursive rhetoric, omitting any notion of objectivity. In practice, the Author is ALIVE, and even upon physical death, the AUTHORSHIP of their work is indelible… IMMORTAL.

Much to the chagrin of some, we are UNIQUE. There is NO one else exactly like you or exactly like me.

No matter how much it is insisted that we and our works are the product of “General Culture,” and of infinite things from the “general historical past” that intersect, what is objectively certain and empirically demonstrable is that there may be similarities to us, but NOT equals… even if we were cloned, in a future desired by the “Transhumanists.” The differences are varied—whether in influences, tastes, family background, ethnic, cultural, etc.—and it is THAT quality of being UNIQUE that also turns us into AUTHORS when we give birth to our works. Our works are NOT a mere patchwork compiled from “General Culture”; they are, among other things, the product of our free decisions, of our inventiveness.

We are potters, but not the creators of the clay. The “General Culture” or the “general historical past” may be that clay, but it is WE who give shape to that clay. I do NOT deny the existence of the clay; I FLATLY REFUSE to allow the attempt to eliminate potters through a “collectivization” or “democratization” of AUTHORSHIP… even more so if the Author has NOT given permission for it (of course, they could not give any permission because, according to them, they have been “killed”).

The Author is very much ALIVE, but there are those who pretend to perform euthanasia on him without his consent.

Admitting the “Death of the Author” is also admitting the DEATH of the Author’s RIGHTS. And even if one considers the AUTHOR a “tyrant” (something extremely debatable), the “Death of the Author” means leaving a VOID where the Author once was. A void that will be filled by a Tyranny even worse than the supposed “tyranny” of the AUTHOR, since whoever fills that void is an usurper.

The AUTHOR is AUTHOR insofar as they are the “creator” or inventor of the work, as well as possessing the quality of being UNIQUE and unrepeatable mentioned earlier. All conditions that are exclusively human.

The Artificial, the Virtual, the Mechanical can only IMITATE, PRETEND, DISGUISE without ever generating real AUTHORSHIP and without ever being an AUTHOR.

Section 2.4: The Artificial is NOT intelligent

Terms like “artificial intelligence,” “virtual reality,” or “Metaverse” are inherently contradictory. The Artificial CANNOT be intelligent, the Virtual is NOT real, and the “Metaverse” (that idea of a Universe beyond the known) is nothing more than a “VERY HERE” in the SAME old universe, only that we interact through a device that allows us to fantasize more vividly.

Speaking of “artificial intelligence” is anthropomorphism: attributing human characteristics to something that is not human. And don’t even get started if one considers that machines can have feelings or be alive (as some Techno-Optimists fantasize)—that is called animism, a religious or mystical belief that attributes “soul” or vital principle to objects.

Quoting Alberto Benegas Lynch: “On the one hand, intelligence derives from inter-legum, that is, ‘to read within,’ to grasp meanings or the essence of what is observed—something that matter is incapable of doing. On the other hand, and even more importantly, intelligence demands the capacity for decision, freedom, free will, since if it is determined by the causal links inherent to matter, there is no possibility of independent choice—there is inexorable programming.”

The ARTIFICIAL lacks many things; one of them is the faculty of self-expression that the ARTIST possesses. But the greatest of its deficiencies is the lack of FREEDOM.

If we use anthropomorphism as a way to easily explain complex processes that occur in machines, it would be acceptable. But there is a tendency to use that language to unconsciously assume that machines are something more than just machines. The moment we accept the premise that the Artificial and the Virtual IS REAL, we will be on the brink of falling into the abyss of madness.

The ARTIST should NOT allow themselves to use this language lightly and should do so with the caveat that they understand reality. For whoever accepts this anthropomorphic language without questioning its proper use will fall into the incoherence of thinking that the processes machines perform are identical to those of humans and will equate machines to the same level… later ready to elevate machines to the level of new gods and reduce humans to insignificance.

Instead of calling these advanced technologies “artificial intelligence” (“AI”), I would prefer to give them another name… I don’t know, perhaps: “MGI,” “Image Generating Machine,” could be a more fitting name given their true condition.

Section 2.5: The Artificial is a TRAP

Many people, blinded by “AI” (from now on I’ll call them “MGI” — Image Generating Machines), succumb to the spell of believing in the fantasy. The ARTIFICIAL can be interesting, eye-catching, precise, pleasant, or even captivating… but it remains ARTIFICIAL. An ILLUSION that, the moment we assume it is REAL instead of accepting that it is NOT, the TRAP will have achieved its purpose. The SCAM is much more effective when the SCAMMED person willingly and gladly surrenders to the LIE.

(“THE TRAP OF ART”)

Claiming that MGIs make ART, or that something generated with MGI is “created,” is to fall into a conceptual TRAP that then spills over into the physical realm. There is NO ART and NO creative process in an MGI. Accepting that the ARTIFICIAL is REAL is, in the end—now literally—accepting: “The DEATH OF THE AUTHOR.” Whoever upholds such things is serving a worldview that yearns for DEhumanization.

The more the Artificial advances, the more reality, authenticity, retreats. The process of automating everything human on a global scale has begun, compounded by a standardization of all things. That UNIQUE quality proper to the human being mentioned in Postulate 3 is disappearing to make way for homogenization.

Until recently, even digital productions bore the human stamp, because the development of the digital product had a human behind it. Today, the artificial percentage in a “work” made with MGI is much greater, reducing the human to nothing more than a mirage.

As the AUTHOR is diluted in the generation process of the “work,” the ORIGINAL disappears, the AUTHENTIC disappears.

The designation of “AI Artist” or “AI Art” is useless, because such things DO NOT exist.

Whoever uses an MGI must give instructions to the machine (what is known as a “PROMPT”) for it to generate the images. Therefore, the so-called “AI Artist” is, in reality, an OPERATOR who ONLY gives instructions, but it is NOT them who generates the image, NOR can they claim AUTHORSHIP for it. It is the MGI that has generated the image, and in any case, it would be the inventors and programmers of the MGI who are the “final authors” of what the machine produces… but digging deeper, if the MGIs have been “trained” with works from real authors (even authors who did NOT give their consent for it), then who is the AUTHOR really? As you can see, they have “killed the author” or at the very least made them disappear.

That process of the MGI OPERATOR is equivalent to someone dictating to a real ARTIST what they must do, but in the end it is the ARTIST who is the AUTHOR of what is produced. In short, it is what is known in the illustration industry as a “Brief.” It is the ILLUSTRATOR who is the AUTHOR of the work, NOT the one who provides the Brief.

The ILLUSTRATOR, over time, by acquiring experience and maturing in the realm of the CRAFT, advances and grows in a CAREER as an ILLUSTRATOR. In contrast, an MGI OPERATOR, over time, what they achieve is a mere “promptuary”—a sarcastic nod to a “rap sheet” or criminal record (in Spanish, prontuario), the police file full of a thief’s offenses. Because, after all, those images are ultimately generated from the massive, unconsented theft of real artists’ works used to train the machine.

(“THE TRAP OF THOUGHT”)

With the use of the traditional library, even if we didn’t realize it, we were training our capacity for personal and informed choice in the searches we started.

The arrival of the internet accelerated that process and shortened both search time and our capacity for choice and information. Search engines can provide information at the top of the results that is more linked to the interests of the owners and programmers of the search engine than to offering complete, plural, and objective information on the topic the user is searching for. Even so, the possibility of investigating further and evaluating the results is still available to those who have an analytical and curious spirit—necessary to develop their own INDEPENDENT THOUGHT that is not conditioned or directed by others like puppets.

But convenience also brings the temptation to fall into laziness. Many users have grown accustomed to abandoning research and accepting the first result without going any further. The growing Intellectual Laziness and lack of curiosity to investigate and analyze objectively has invaded society, and the artistic field is not exempt.

To this alarming reality is added the arrival of the ARTIFICIAL, which already provides instant, express solutions—far more so than Google or other internet tools did until now. It is NO LONGER necessary to search; it is enough to ask, to “dialogue” with the machine, and the “solution” will be ready instantly.

By accepting the ARTIFICIAL with total surrender and submission, we fall into the TRAP OF THOUGHT.

We are heading toward the absolute disappearance of Critical Thinking, Objective Analysis, Curiosity, and, of course, INVENTIVENESS or CREATIVITY.

Soon we will delegate to machines even what is most precious to us: consciousness itself.

If we fall into the TRAP OF THOUGHT, we will atrophy the muscle of our brain for analytical and objective thinking; we will lose the capacity to make FREE and truly informed decisions, to develop creative and effective solutions regarding our ART and the problems we face in our daily lives.

Another TRAP related to THOUGHT is CENSORSHIP. We should NOT ignore the fact that, although the programmers of MGIs talk to us about an “ethics” of the ARTIFICIAL, it is public knowledge that the magnates who own the ARTIFICIAL are precisely the ones who lack “ethics” and scruples. They are guided by personal interests, and the empathetic benefactor personas they display to the media are just a facade. Moreover, we should not overlook the possibility that using supposed regulation and limits on the artificial as an excuse could hide ways of restricting any kind of personal expression or creativity that does not fit their criteria or “policies.”

(“We may be being pushed toward SINGLE THOUGHT / UNIFORM THINKING.”)

Thus, if the ARTIST falls into the TRAP of the ARTIFICIAL, the ARTIST will be lost as a cultural actor. Through their work, the ARTIST can reflect on the surrounding reality and question it, offering new perspectives and ways of interpretation. Art can be a form of activism and social denunciation, transmitting messages of protest and calls to action. But if the ARTIST is ABSORBED by the machines, the ARTIST will NO LONGER reflect, NO LONGER question, NO LONGER contribute new perspectives NOR other forms of interpretation. Their activism and protests will become EMPTY actions, since such actions will only be a reflection of the dominant discourse of the establishment guided by the ARTIFICIAL.

(“The ARTIST will NO LONGER have a VOICE; they will become a REPLICATOR. The ECHO of a global, homogeneous, superficial discourse… and even without their own aesthetic.”)

# Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Final Words

(”======”)

A reader with little or no reading comprehension, or one with ill intentions, might conclude that the author of this Manifesto is a “technophobe” and fearful of technological progress and MGIs in particular. So, just to be clear—in case of doubt—I am very far from having any phobia toward technology, and I am in no way frightened by technological advancement or MGIs. On the contrary, I celebrate progress and consider how far it is possible to use new technologies as tools… once some kind of regulation exists that guarantees artists’ rights are not violated.

I glimpse the likelihood that everything will soon be regulated—not so much because those who legislate are good and empathetic people, but because they will realize the dangers that a technological advance of this magnitude can pose to the entire system itself.

It is not technology in itself that worries me, but the MISUSE that can be made of it, and above all I am deeply concerned about this new ANTIhuman worldview that is taking shape, where the human is objectified (and everything human is considered despicable and disposable) while the machine is humanized (and in some cases, everything related to it is venerated).

I worry about the effects all this could have on people’s FREEDOM and on ART in particular, because the more digitized, machine-dependent, and virtualized we become, the easier it is to control and manipulate us. Anyone who refuses to see these dangers is, at the very least, an irredeemable naive fool.

My interest is that society—and artists in particular—can adapt to these technological advances and new circumstances without being absorbed by a delusional worldview that desires our disappearance.

(“It remains for us ARTISTS to be as human as we possibly can… before they turn us all into an AVATAR.”)
— Oscar Senonez

“… Hasta la vista, baby …”
— Cyberdyne Systems T-800 ( Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991)

Further down the road, in this little corner of the internet, I’ll continue watching and reflecting on this emerging artificial landscape.
Jump in and join the conversation — come on, it’s completely free!

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Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

After having explored the different links of what I call the Illustrative Chain, it is necessary to pause for a moment.
I am not going to add a new concept; I am going to clarify exactly what has been done so far.

Because the Illustrative Chain is not a methodology, it is not a tool, it is not a dogma, nor is it a theoretical model that proposes how illustration should be done.

The Illustrative Chain is, simply, a description.

A description of the real and objective process through which an illustration comes into existence as an illustration.

And this clarification is no small matter.

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From Intuition to Conscious Craft

Many illustrators work by intuition. They draw, test, correct, draw again. In that process (valid and necessary), decisions intervene that are often not named or consciously recognized.

The Illustrative Chain does not invent those conditioning factors; it makes them visible.

Client, audience, medium/support, content, purpose, and time are always present, even when the illustrator decides to ignore them. The difference between naive work and professional work is not suppressing these factors, but understanding and assuming them.

Naming the process does not make it rigid; it makes the mechanism conscious.

Illustrating Is Not Drawing Well

Here appears one of the most widespread (and most harmful) confusions in the contemporary visual field.

Knowing how to draw does not turn anyone into an illustrator. Nor does knowing how to paint. Nor having a recognizable style.

Caution: at no point am I saying (much less defending) that mediocre work, sloppy execution, or lack of technical and artistic rigor should be accepted.

What I want to point out is that being a good artist is not enough to be an illustrator.

The illustrator is not defined by isolated technical skill, but by their ability to operate within a conditioned process.

Someone who only draws or only paints can produce beautiful, powerful, or expressive images. But if that image has not gone through the Illustrative Chain, we are not facing an illustration, but an autonomous plastic act.

All art can be illustrative in a broad sense. But that does not mean that all art is illustration.

Style and Decision

In illustration, style is not a starting point: it is a consequence.

Every visual decision (what to show, what to omit, how to prioritize, what tone to adopt) responds, directly or indirectly, to one of the links in the chain.

When style takes precedence over the process, illustration risks becoming self-referential. It may impress, it may stand out, but it may fail in its illustrative function.

Illustrating is not imposing a personal gaze on any content, but making that gaze dialogue with a concrete reality.

The False Creative Freedom

There exists a romantic idea (very widespread) that illustration should be a territory of absolute freedom. That idea confuses two distinct professions.

The painter or drawer can afford to work from impulse, emotion, or internal need. The illustrator, on the other hand, works from a commission, explicit or implicit.

Illustration is born conditioned. That does not impoverish it; it is what truly defines it.

The illustrator’s creativity does not consist in doing whatever they want, but in finding visual solutions within real limits. Limits that are not arbitrary, but structural to the profession.

Illustrating Is Assuming Responsibility

Illustration communicates. It clarifies, attracts, informs, beautifies, opines, entertains. It is never neutral.

Understanding the Illustrative Chain implies assuming that every image affects someone, in a specific context, with a concrete intention. Ignoring that does not make the image “freer”; it makes it irresponsible.

The professional illustrator is not the one who draws best, but the one who understands what they are doing, for whom, why, and under what conditions.

The Illustrative Chain as a Description of the Profession

I insist again: The Illustrative Chain does not prescribe. It does not indicate how to illustrate. It offers no recipes.

It grants no permissions nor prohibits paths. It simply describes the real process by which an image becomes an illustration. And it is precisely that understanding of the process that defines the title of illustrator.

That title, today, is deeply bastardized. It is applied lightly to anyone who produces images, without attending to the nature of the profession.

That is why it was necessary to clarify the terms. Because illustrating is not a pose, nor a label, nor a visual style. Illustrating is a profession.

And like any profession, it demands awareness of its practice, its limits, and its objective reality.

To summarize: Illustrating is not producing images; it is assuming a profession and taking responsibility for what is communicated.

In the next article, I will focus on an essential characteristic of illustration that, surprisingly, is almost always overlooked.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

To the links already developed in the illustrative chain:

• The client

• The audience

• The medium/support

• The content

• The purpose

I now add one final, cross-cutting and decisive factor: TIME.

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Time as a Condition of the Profession

When I speak of the illustrative chain, I refer to the complete process that leads to the final illustration. Not the isolated act of drawing, but the professional journey that transforms a communication need into a functional image.

This journey (unlike autonomous drawing) cannot do without time.

Time is, in practice, one of the great conditioning factors of the profession of illustrating. It appears in the form of a delivery date, a deadline that forces decisions to be made, solutions to be prioritized, and possible paths to be discarded.

This journey distinguishes illustration from free or expressive drawing, where there is no external communication need nor a chain that obliges one to serve someone else’s message. In illustration, every link matters, because the result is not merely art—it is effective communication.

Unfortunately, many people (especially those just starting out in illustration) tend to ignore that an essential part of this discipline is its commercial nature and its belonging to an industry, rather than a purely artistic practice. This omission leads to idealizing a profession that is far from completely free and ultimately distorts the understanding of what illustration truly is.

Art, Time, and Editorial Reality

It is reasonable to think that art needs time, space, and tranquility. And although an artist can create even under adverse conditions, the deep development of an idea requires a specific amount of time to mature, test, and correct.

In general terms (though not absolute), we could say:

• More available time → greater exploration and development.

• Less time → faster decisions and more synthetic solutions.

Complex, technical, or highly detailed illustrations usually demand more time than those that are more direct or schematic. This does not mean that one is “better” than the other; they simply respond to different temporal contexts.

Does more time guarantee a better illustration?

Not necessarily.

Some illustrators perform better under pressure, while others need longer periods to unfold their visual thinking. But in any case, time always conditions the illustration.

It is common (and almost inevitable) that, when seeing their work published, the illustrator thinks:
“Today I would do it differently,” “Now a better idea occurs to me,” and similar things.

That does not invalidate the illustration. It simply shows that it was created at a specific moment, under specific temporal conditions.

Time as the Invisible Link

The delivery date directly influences:

• The level of detail

• The chosen technique

• The degree of conceptual exploration

• Compositional decisions

That is why I incorporate time as one more link (albeit as a bonus) within the illustrative chain.

I add it separately, as a bonus, because it is not a linear link in the chain, but one that crosses through all of them: it affects the client (who imposes the deadline), the audience (because the considerations of the audience taken within that time will directly affect the work), the medium/support (which limits techniques due to deadlines), the content (which forces prioritization of ideas), and the purpose (which must be fulfilled within the given time). Without recognizing it, we ignore how time transforms art into a real profession, conditioned by the pressure of the editorial, advertising world, etc. In other words, the industry limits the work.

Time is not always mentioned, but it is always present. And understanding its influence is part of comprehending illustration as a profession, not as an isolated gesture.

The Illustrative Chain is not a methodology, nor a tool, nor a dogma, nor a theoretical model that proposes how illustration should be done. That is why, in the next article, I will pause to clarify exactly what has been done so far.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

We have now covered the main links of the illustrative chain:

• The client

• The audience

• The support

• The content

To conclude this series dedicated to understanding how each of these elements conditions and transforms the illustration, we arrive at the final link: the purpose.

At first, I had considered developing each aspect of the purpose in separate articles. However, I prefer to offer here a general, synthetic, and structural overview. There will be plenty of opportunity to delve deeper into each point later on, or to intersperse them with other topics.

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Illustration always answers a “What for?”

I revisit an idea already presented in previous texts:

“In recent times, there has been a proliferation of people making drawings without any defined purpose and calling themselves illustrators. They don’t care what their images say; they only care how they look.”

Illustration has a reason for existing. It is neither random nor gratuitous. It can—and must—respond to the question: What for?

That purpose is not an afterthought; it conditions and shapes the illustration from its very origin.

Some purposes of illustration

The purposes listed below do not constitute an exhaustive or definitive list, but they allow us to grasp the wide range of functions that an illustration can fulfill.

1. To Clarify

   
   Illustration fully deploys its capacity to illuminate. It makes accessible content that would otherwise be complex, abstract, or excessively dense. In this sense, it concretely embodies the well-known saying: “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

   Here, clarity is not an aesthetic value—it is a strictly communicative one. This point was already highlighted in the article: “ACTIVITIES OF ILLUSTRATION II — TO ILLUMINATE.”

2. To Attract

   
   Illustration seduces the reader only to immediately return them to their true companion: the text (or whatever is being illustrated, of course). Very often a book is chosen because of its cover, or an article is read because the opening image sparks curiosity, creates intrigue, or promises something valuable. That first visual impact acts as an entry door.

   Attracting is not distracting—it is inviting to read. The seduction of illustration does not aim to hold attention for its own sake, but to lead the reader toward the main content with greater willingness and enthusiasm. It is a gesture of visual hospitality: it opens the door and points the way. This point was also mentioned in the article: “ACTIVITIES OF ILLUSTRATION I — TO ACCOMPANY.”

3. To Beautify

   
   This is one of the most misunderstood roles of illustration. Undoubtedly, an illustration can—and often does—beautify. But reducing its function solely to that would be a serious mistake. There certainly exists illustration whose primary purpose is to beautify or provide aesthetic beauty—the purely decorative illustration—and denying it would mean ignoring a legitimate and valuable part of the craft.

   However, an important clarification is needed: illustrating is never just decorating. Even when the declared goal is to beautify, decorative illustration remains a communicative act that requires research, understanding of context, knowledge of the client, and sensitivity toward the audience. Beautifying in the illustrative sense also carries responsibility; it is not an empty ornament, but a visual decision loaded with intentions, readings, and consequences.

4. To Opine

   
   In this case, illustration adopts an active stance and takes a side. It functions in a way analogous to visual journalism: it criticizes, denounces, ironizes, celebrates, or defends a position with clarity and expressive force.

   This role is especially common in editorial illustration, in journalistic articles, and in many of the images that circulate across media with an explicit discursive charge (for example, those related to political, social, or current issues). However, although it appears more frequently and sharply in the journalistic field, opining—or taking a position—is a role that any illustration can assume to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the context, the purpose, and the freedom allowed by the commission.

   Illustration that opines does not limit itself to decorating or informing: it intervenes in the debate, provokes reactions, and in many cases helps shape collective perception.

   (Brief note: The well-known “meme,” although it also opines, criticizes, and circulates massively on social networks, should not be confused with illustration. Later on I will develop other essential characteristics that define the craft of illustrating and distinguish it from other forms of image. There it will become much clearer why the meme, despite its communicative power and massive reach, does not equate to illustration.)

5. To Entertain

   
   Some illustrations aim to hold the reader, actively involve them, and turn looking into a playful or prolonged experience. Visual games, scenes overflowing with details, images that invite slow, exploratory, almost detective-like reading: all of them propose a bond based on sustained enjoyment of discovery.

   Entertainment is not superficiality. On the contrary, it is a legitimate way to forge a genuine connection with the reader. When illustration entertains, it does not merely entertain: it generates permanence, curiosity, and return visits. It is a communicative strategy that turns the image into a habitable space—a place where the reader chooses to stay.

6. To Inform

   
   Illustration can explain, detail, and organize information effectively and directly. This role is especially evident in technical and scientific illustrations, infographics, and certain types of journalistic illustration. With a reduced number of visual elements (and without the need for lengthy texts), they manage to communicate complex data, processes, relationships, or structures in an immediate and understandable way.

   The strength of these images lies precisely in their capacity for synthesis: they transform the abstract or dense into something visually accessible, hierarchized, and legible in just a few seconds.

Purpose and professional awareness

An illustration can respond to more than one purpose at the same time. However, there is usually one that predominates and organizes the others.

The illustrator must clearly know what the main purpose of their image is. What is expected of it. What function it will fulfill within the editorial system in which it is inserted.

Without that awareness, the illustration risks becoming a well-executed image that is conceptually empty. And an illustration without purpose is, at best, a correct drawing; at worst, a visual presumption.

In the next article, I will add a “bonus track”: one last important link in the illustrative chain.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

Following the structure of the illustrative chain, we have already covered the following links:

• The client

• The audience

• The support

Now it is time to focus on the content.

I call content everything that the element to be illustrated contains or carries. It may be a text, a brand, a slogan, an idea, or a concept. All of them hold information, context, and pre-existing associations. They evoke stories, places, memories, atmospheres, and meanings even before being illustrated.

Everything that surrounds the element to be illustrated (and that gives it meaning) forms part of its content.

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The Content as a Field of Forces

The word “love,” for example, immediately activates a whole visual repertoire: hearts, arrows, Cupid, couples, family bonds, gestures, intimate scenes, etc. All of that is content.

The illustrator does not start from a blank page. They confront that flood of associations and must decide what to take, what to discard, and eventually, what to add. But they cannot ignore it. Illustrating is always working upon pre-existing content.

As we have already seen when analyzing the activities of illustration, the image is inevitably tied to its companion. Consequently, it will be modified by it.

Conditionings of the content

Content conditions the illustration in multiple ways. Among them, at least three are fundamental:

1) The theme

If we are asked to illustrate the word “love,” our most brilliant ideas (just to exaggerate for a moment) about the extinction of the dinosaurs will be useless. It may seem obvious, but this exaggeration serves to highlight a central point: illustration operates under basic conditionings that cannot be ignored.

The theme is closely linked to the client, the audience, and, as we saw, also to the support. The client commissions the illumination of a specific theme for a particular audience. The question for an illustrator is not “What do I want to illustrate?”, but rather: What must I illustrate and for whom?

Is it possible to connect love with the extinction of the dinosaurs? Maybe. Will the client allow it? Will the audience understand it? That is another matter entirely.

2) The historical context

Now suppose the theme of “love” belongs to the text of Tristan and Isolde. Automatically, that text becomes part of the content.

If the illustrator had been thinking of a contemporary relationship, or had even imagined Romeo and Juliet, they will have to reformulate their ideas. They cannot draw a cell phone in the lovers’ hands or dress the characters in codes alien to their time.

It is true that temporal crossings or bold reinterpretations could be attempted (if the client permits it), but even then, it cannot be denied that the historical context has shifted and directed the visual decisions.

Content always leaves its mark.

3) The context of the medium

Closely tied to the client appears the context of the medium: its editorial line, its identity, its cultural positioning. This is what we might call the “personality” or “way of being” of the medium that will publish the illustration.

If the text about Tristan and Isolde is to be published by a traditional, avant-garde, academic, popular, religious, or secular publisher, that information is added to the content. Each profile brings its own invisible filter (sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious), and many possible ideas will be discarded before they are even drawn.

Content is not only what is said, but from where it is said.

Creative freedom and craft

Everything the illustrator must illustrate arrives loaded with content and contexts that carry weight. That is why it is essential to know how much real freedom exists within a commission.

Here one of the central differences between the illustrator and the autonomous painter or drawer becomes visible (see the main article in this space: “Drawing is NOT illustrating and illustrating is NOT drawing”). While the latter can afford to work from personal impulse, the illustrator is conditioned from the very beginning by the content (and by the entire illustrative chain, of course).

The illustrator’s creativity does not disappear: it is exercised within referential frameworks. Within the limits proper to the craft.

In other words: the illustrator does not do what they want, but what they must, in order to illuminate. And it is precisely within that tension that the craft finds its true meaning.

In the next article we will look at: The Purpose

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

Continuing with The Illustrative Chain, after having analyzed the client and the audience as elements that structurally modify the illustration, it is now time to focus on another fundamental link in the illustrative chain: the support.

I call support the place where the illustration will be exhibited, reproduced, or published. But the term is not limited to a single aspect. On the contrary, it encompasses a set of variables that directly condition visual decisions.

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What do we mean by support?

When I speak of support in The Illustrative Chain, I am referring to:

• The medium: book, magazine, poster, urban billboard, packaging, container, screen, etc.

• The material: matte or glossy paper, grammage/weight, wood, plastic, wall, glass, among others.

• The available space: the size and format in which the illustration must exist.

• The reproduction technique: CMYK printing, grayscale, screen printing, flexography, digital reproduction, or even manual techniques such as watercolor or tempera conditioned by their subsequent reproduction, and more.

Each of these variables modifies the illustration even before it exists.

The support as a productive limit

It is common to have a powerful and complex visual idea that, when confronted with the real support, must be reformulated. Not necessarily because the idea is weak, but rather because the support imposes concrete limits.

An illustration loaded with elements may work perfectly on a double-page spread in a book, but become illegible in a reduced format. Similarly, an image designed for slow, contemplative reading may fail on a street poster, where the viewer is in motion and has only seconds to decode the message.

The support is not a creative obstacle for the illustrator; it is a framework of reality.

Technical conditions and reading

If the commission requires reproduction in grayscale, thinking of the illustration in terms of color may prove ineffective or even counterproductive. If the paper and printing technique tend to “muddy” or clog the ink, an image heavy with fine line details will lose definition and clarity.

Every technical decision affects the final reading. And as we have seen from the beginning, the illustration exists to be read.

Ignoring these conditions is equivalent to designing an image for a context that does not exist.

Knowing the destination of the image

The illustrator must know where and how their work will be reproduced. That information is not incidental; it is structural data that must be present from the very start of the process.

The support does not appear at the end of the journey; it is present from the first sketch. In the illustrative chain, it is a decisive station that forces us to think of the illustration not only as an image (much less as a loose, floating image), but also as a reproduced object, situated and read in a specific context.

I will expand on this a bit more at another time, but in the next article we will continue our journey through The Illustrative Chain and address: The Content.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

Following what was outlined in “Illustration: A Diagram” regarding THE ILLUSTRATIVE CHAIN, and after having analyzed the role of the client, we now move on to another of the five fundamental links in the illustrative chain: the audience.

We understand the audience to be the reader or final recipient of the illustration. It is the endpoint of the journey. Everything in the chain (client, medium/support, content, and purpose) ultimately points toward it.

The audience is the one who will see the illustration once it has passed through, been modified by, and conditioned by every station in the process. Ultimately, it is the one who interprets it.

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The audience is not an abstract concept

When we speak of the audience here, we are not referring to broad sociological categories, nor to advertising terms such as target or target market. Nor to statistical or demographic profiles.

We are talking about the audience as a specific type of reader.

Thinking about the audience means asking oneself: For whom are we illustrating? And that question is not merely decorative: it modifies the illustration from its very foundations.

It is not the same to illustrate for children as for adults. It is not the same to illustrate for expert readers as for occasional ones. It is not the same to illustrate in an educational, literary, journalistic, or advertising context. Each audience has its own codes, expectations, reading thresholds, and particular ways of decoding the image.

Knowing the reader

The illustrator must research, investigate, and become familiar with the world of the reader they are addressing. The better they know the audience, the greater their sensitivity will be in understanding how to reach them.

This does not mean underestimating or oversimplifying the reader. Quite the opposite. Knowing the audience allows the illustrator to avoid clichés, unnecessary commonplaces, or visual decisions that hinder reading.

Thinking about the audience forces the illustrator to explore paths they might not have considered from a purely personal or stylistic logic. It pulls them out of their comfort zone and returns them to the terrain of communication.

Risks of ignoring the audience

When the audience is not taken into account, the illustration risks losing its ability to illuminate. It can confuse, disorient, or even become offensive.

Underestimating the reader is just as problematic as ignoring them altogether. In both cases, the illustration fails to fulfill its function and becomes an obstacle rather than a bridge.

The challenge intensifies when the illustrator works for other cultures, different social contexts, or what we might call specific “reader tribes”: highly educated audiences, non-literate readers, children of different ages, communities with their own visual codes.

Each of these audiences demands a particular kind of listening and a conscious visual translation.

A link that conditions

Consideration of the audience directly affects the final illustration. And in many cases, it is the client themselves who brings this factor to the table, reminding the illustrator that their work does not end at the drawing table, but in the reader’s experience.

In the illustrative chain, the audience is not a passive recipient: it is an active presence that conditions decisions, directs resources, and defines the true scope of the illustration.

In the next article, we will explore another important link: The Medium/Support

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

As we have already established in the previous articles, and especially in “Illustration: A Diagram,” illustration is not an isolated act nor an autonomous expression that exhausts itself in its own existence. It forms part of a mechanism, of a larger system that conditions its existence, its form, and its meaning.

To explain this, I usually turn to a simple metaphor: imagine illustration as a passenger taking a journey on a train. I call that train the Illustrative Chain. During the journey, the train stops at various stations; at each one, the illustration gets off, is intervened in, adjusted, modified. By the time it reaches its destination, it is no longer exactly the same as when it departed.

One of those stations (or links in the invisible chain of illustration), the first one we will address, is THE CLIENT.

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Who is the client?

We understand the client to be the person or entity who commissions an illustration project. It can be a company, a publishing house, an institution, or an individual. Regardless of their size or profile, the client plays a decisive role within the illustrative chain.

Not because they are “more important” than the other links, but because their intervention structurally modifies the illustration’s journey.

Let’s look at some key aspects.

The work’s very existence depends on the client

The client is the one who commissions and funds the project. This, which may seem obvious, has profound consequences.

If the commission does not materialize, the illustration never completes its journey: it remains unfinished, suspended, never interacting with the other components of the illustrative chain. And as we have already seen, illustration only fully defines itself in relation to that chain. Without circulation, without publication, without contact with the reader, there is no illustration in the fullest sense.

Here we are not talking about contracts or legal matters, but something more essential: without a commission, the illustration never becomes what it is.

The client has a point of view

Many clients approach their commissions with a preconceived idea of the outcome. They propose a concept, an intention, a frame of reference, and expect the illustrator to give it visual form.

This inevitably conditions the work. The illustrator must dialogue with that point of view, adapt to it, negotiate it, or push against it. Sometimes, they even have to deal with decisions that border on whim.

Far from being an anomaly, this is a constitutive part of the profession. Editorial illustration does not emerge from a vacuum or from individual impulse: it arises from the commission, and the commission always brings with it a pre-existing gaze.

The client knows their business

This is perhaps one of the hardest points for many illustrators to accept.

The client knows their business. They know their product. They know their audience. In most cases, they know it better than the illustrator thinks they do.

Ignoring this is often a sign of misplaced pride. The illustrator, shielded by their technical or artistic knowledge, tries to impose decisions that are not always the most effective from a communicative standpoint.

When the illustrator manages to understand that the client’s knowledge can enhance the illustration (and does not necessarily impoverish it), the work improves. Not because the client “calls the shots,” but because the illustration aligns with its real communicative function.

An inevitable link

These are just some basic aspects of how the client intervenes and transforms the final illustration. Their presence is not circumstantial; it is part of the structure.

Some illustrators see the client as an enemy trying to curtail their artistic freedom. Others, at the opposite extreme, behave as mere executors, willing to produce anything without questioning the result.

Between those two poles lies a complex, uncomfortable, and deeply professional territory: the realm of balance. Reaching it is not easy, and it deserves its own exploration, which we will address at some point later.

For now, it is enough to understand this: in the illustrative chain, the client is not an obstacle. It is an inevitable station on the journey.

In the next article, we will look at the second link in the Illustrative Chain: The Audience

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

Let’s do a quick review.

One thing that often hinders the understanding of illustration as a discipline is the confusion surrounding terms. That’s why it’s useful to return to a key statement that serves as the starting point for everything we’ve been developing:

Drawing is not illustrating, and illustrating is not drawing.

Illustration is not defined by graphic skill but by its communicative function. And that function is necessarily articulated through two activities that integrate toward a single goal: to communicate.

To avoid getting lost among concepts, it’s helpful to pause and map out the territory. From this comes the need for a general outline, a conceptual diagram that allows us to understand illustration not as an isolated gesture, but as a system—before we continue to develop everything that’s been proposed.

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The Two Fundamental Activities of Illustration

Every authentic illustration fulfills, at least, two basic functions:

1. It Accompanies

   Illustration does not exist in isolation: it accompanies a text, an idea, a narration, an editorial discourse. It does not compete with it nor replace it; it engages in dialogue. It connects, subordinates itself, creates tension, or reinforces—but always in relation to what it illustrates.

2. It Illuminates

   To illustrate is to shed light on the content. To clarify, expand, suggest, create tension, or enrich the meaning. Not to decorate, not to embellish gratuitously, not to distract.

When these two activities are not present, the image may be interesting, beautiful, or provocative, but it is not fulfilling an illustrative function.

The Illustrative Chain

Illustration is not an isolated act, but the result of a process.
I call that process the illustrative chain.

This chain is composed of at least five fundamental links:

• The client

• The audience

• The medium/support

• The content

• The purpose

Each of these elements conditions the visual decisions. Ignoring any one of them weakens the whole. The final illustration is always the result of the tension and balance among these factors.

From an editorial perspective, this chain is not optional: it is structural.

After this text, I will dedicate myself to developing each of these links, explaining what each element means and how it contributes to the final outcome of the illustrator’s work. The most extensive one will be the purpose, to which I may devote several articles, since that is where the deep meaning of every illustration is defined: why it exists, for whom, and for what.

Here a diagram should appear.
And yet, it is not.

Not out of carelessness, but out of coherence. This article speaks of conceptual structures, not visual forms. The scheme exists, even if it is not drawn; it is activated in reading and completed in reflection. In this space, not showing is also a way of illuminating.

OK, OK… if you still need to see the diagram, even if it’s so simple it’s hardly worth seeing, here is the link to the old article where I did include an image of it: A LA IMAGEN DEL ESQUEMA (spanish only)

In the next article we will begin by looking at The Client.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

Following the framework I outlined in the article “Drawing is not illustrating, and illustrating is not drawing,” today we continue with the second major function of illustration. We’ve already covered the first one: Accompanying.
Now let’s move on to the next: Illuminating.

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If accompanying defines the role of illustration, illuminating defines its function.

The term is no accident: to illustrate literally means to illuminate. Illustration exists to help the reader see with greater clarity what the text, the idea, or the context proposes. It does not add light through mere ornamental excess; it casts light to make a meaning legible.

Illuminating is not embellishing. Nor is it redundant. It is clarifying.

Seeing is understanding (sharing codes)

To illuminate, the illustrator must wield tools that do not belong exclusively to the pictorial-technical realm, but to the field of communication. Illustrating involves working with codes shared between the image-maker and the receiver.

When the illustrator uses codes that only he or she understands, illustration ceases to fulfill its function. At that point, it does not illuminate—it obscures.

Here we enter the territory of visual rhetoric.

The well-known saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” does not refer to an automatic superiority of the visual, but to its capacity for condensation. An image can hold multiple levels of reading because it is composed of signs and symbols that the viewer interprets, even in the absence of text.

Some of those signs appear universal. A simple form like two dots and a semicircle is usually interpreted as a smile. Yet much of visual meaning is neither natural nor innate: it is a cultural construction.

Meaning is not intrinsic

Societies build their own systems of signs, codes, and conventions. Even within the same culture, different groups develop differentiated readings. The image does not “say” anything by itself; it says what a community is prepared to read into it.

As Norberto Chaves notes in his book “Marca: los significados de un signo identificador” ( Brand: The Meanings of an Identifying Sign ) :

“The signification is a function dependent on social codifications and not an intrinsic content of the sign. The sign means what some social convention has decided it should mean.”

This point is crucial for editorial illustration. Illuminating is not imposing a personal reading; it is anticipating the reading of the other.

Illustrating is anticipating the reading

The illustrator must know (or at least intuit with precision) the codes that the reader will bring into play when encountering the image. Otherwise, there is a risk of generating unintended ambiguity, confusion, or readings that contradict the editorial purpose.

I repeat: mastering pictorial technique is not enough. It is necessary to understand the basic principles of visual rhetoric… how signs operate, how meanings are organized, how context, medium, and the receiver’s culture influence them.

Chaves explains this clearly when analyzing brand design (a field that shares similar challenges with illustration), warning that many errors stem not from form but from a poor understanding of the sign’s communicative functioning:

“…When designing a brand, an erroneous characterization of its requirements leads to the introduction of dysfunctional features that devalue it, reducing its performance. And when justifying the design, recourse is made to arbitrary, unfounded arguments disconnected from the real functioning of those signs in concrete public communication. It is suggestive that among those arguments, semantic ones always predominate; functional ones (legibility, pregnance, systematicity) or formal ones (cultural quality, currency, stylistic pertinence) are omitted… Once the sign is emitted, the emitter loses control of it: it falls under the decoding sovereignty of the receiver. That is precisely the key challenge of human communication. Hence the importance of knowing or accurately intuiting the codes that the receiver will activate upon receiving the message.”

Once emitted, the image no longer belongs to its author and becomes subject to the receiver’s interpretive sovereignty.

That is the central challenge of all visual communication.

The inevitable question

Every illustration should be subjected to a basic, almost uncomfortable question:

Does it illuminate or obscure? Does it clarify or confuse?

From an editorial perspective, this is not an aesthetic issue but an ethical and functional one. An illustration that confuses the reader is not neutral: it hinders reading, distorts content, weakens the discourse.

A simple (and profoundly revealing) exercise is to confront the image with real readers. Ask what they see, what they understand, what they interpret. Listen without correcting. There, with raw honesty, you measure whether the illustration is fulfilling its function of illuminating.

Illustrating is not saying more or showing off a brilliant style and technique. Illustrating is making see better.

In the next article, I have prepared the ground to develop in detail what I call The Illustrative Chain: that invisible and inevitable journey that defines an illustration in the proper sense.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

Building on what was discussed in the previous article (”Drawing is NOT illustrating, and illustrating is NOT drawing”), I will now begin to develop the ideas presented there. In this series, we will explore the fundamental activities of illustration. Today, I will focus on the first of them: accompanying.

Illustration is not a solitary act. It does not exist for itself nor is it justified in isolation. It always accompanies something: a text, an idea, a product, a discourse, an editorial context. Its raison d’être lies in that relationship.

A bond of mutual dependence is established between the illustration and that which it illustrates. It is not mere subordination; it has to do with functional coexistence. The illustration supports, reinforces, guides, creates tension or, occasionally, even contradicts its companion. It can support, attract, beautify, inform, suggest, or criticize. But it always engages in dialogue.

To illustrate is to allude. It is to build a visual anchor that refers to something else. Separated from its context, the illustration loses much of its communicative power. It may remain attractive in formal terms, but it is incomplete. Even when it captures the reader’s gaze, that gaze is destined to inevitably return to its companion.

Illustration is not made to be contemplated in solitude.

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The companions of illustration

Talking about illustration necessarily involves talking about its companions. Identifying them is key to understanding its field of action.

Field of work

Illustration is not a production isolated from its domain. Its field of work is broad and transversal, crossing much of contemporary visual culture.

It is present in film, in the design of worlds, characters, costumes, and atmospheres. It lives in packaging, posters, magazines, books, fashion design, video games, digital interfaces, and mobile devices. Even when we do not explicitly recognize it, illustration operates tacitly.

Illustration lives by accompanying. That is its natural condition.

Text

Text is perhaps the most common companion of editorial illustration. From a title to an extensive narrative, from a technical manual to a journalistic note, illustration can intervene to guide reading, expand meaning, or open new layers of interpretation.

Fairy tales, novels, encyclopedias, dictionaries, school books, advertising, press: wherever there are words, illustration can appear as a mediator between the content and the reader.

Brand or product

In the advertising field, illustration accompanies brands and products. It does not do so in the same way as it accompanies a text. Here it operates on symbolic values, identity, recall, tone, and positioning.

Illustration does not merely describe; it builds narrative around the object or brand.

Idea or concept

There is a vast territory where illustration accompanies abstract ideas or complex concepts. This field includes advertising (storyboards), film and television, video games (design of scenarios, characters, objects), education, conferences, architecture, and even judicial settings, where illustration can clarify processes or situations that are difficult to record in other ways.

In some cases, the illustrator is called upon to accompany creative processes, helping to visualize ideas in real time. There, illustration is not a final result but a tool for thought.

Accompanying as a deliberate decision

A few years ago, after the death of the writer Liliana Bodoc, I participated—along with other colleagues (illustrators who had worked on various books of her work)—in an exhibition dedicated to those illustrations, accompanied by talks and public encounters.

What was truly significant about that exhibition was not the quality of the images displayed, but an intelligent curatorial decision: each illustration was accompanied by the book to which it belonged. Anyone who wished could open the volume, find the illustrated passage, and reconstruct the bond between text and image. They could analyze what had been illustrated, what had been omitted, and, above all, why that image and not another.

That gesture turned the exhibition into a space for reading, not just contemplation. The illustration ceased to be an autonomous object to recover its original function: to accompany a text, dialogue with it, illuminate it from a concrete visual decision.

An illustration exhibition that dispenses with its companion loses much of its meaning. Illustration does not exist solely for aesthetic pleasure. Its raison d’être is to communicate, narrate, guide reading, build meaning. Separating it from what it accompanies is to deactivate the very core of the craft.

Understanding to complete

Illustration will always be linked to one or more of these companions. Even when we observe it outside its context (in a catalog, an exhibition, or a museum), its full comprehension depends on knowing what it accompanies.

It is only when illustration and companion meet that the image unfolds its full meaning. Before that, we only see part of the message.

Accompanying is not a minor gesture; it is the foundation of the craft of illustration.

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

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In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

Author > Oscar Senonez / The absence of illustrations in this article is intentional.

This text was originally written in 2009. I am rewriting it today not to correct it, but to refine it: to place it before new readers, new editorial contexts, and with the perspective that time in the profession provides. The premise remains the same, but the intellectual responsibility has also grown. If out of curiosity you want to see the original article, you can do so at Sen Imago. (Spanish only)

The question that gave rise to it is still relevant:

Is every drawing an illustration?

The short answer is no.
The interesting answer requires us to pause.

Definition by function, not by appearance

For an image to be considered illustration, its technical execution or visual appearance is not enough. Illustration is not defined by how it looks, but by what it does and where it operates.

To illustrate means to operate within a system of constraints. An illustration exists in relation to elements external to itself: a commission, a reader, a medium, a content, and a communicational purpose. Without this framework, the image may be many things—drawing, fine art, graphic exercise, visual exploration—but not illustration in the strict sense.

In recent decades it has become common to find image-makers who call themselves illustrators without a clear communicative intention behind their work. Images that accompany nothing, that illuminate no content, that do not respond to a concrete editorial need. In such cases, the visual becomes self-referential: style matters more than meaning, the signature more than the message.

This is not a matter of skill. There are technically clumsy drawings and extraordinary drawings that nonetheless illustrate nothing. Likewise, there are effective illustrations that do not depend on drawing as a technique—think of photography, collage, or purely typographic resources.

Hence the fundamental principle:

Drawing is not illustrating, and illustrating is not drawing.

Two different acts, two different kinds of learning

Drawing and illustrating are different practices, even though they may coincide in the same person.

Learning to draw usually focuses on formal aspects: anatomy, perspective, composition, light, shadow, gesture. Learning illustration, on the other hand, belongs to the field of communication: interpreting content, understanding context, anticipating a reading, making visual decisions based on a recipient.

Many illustrators practice their craft intuitively, incorporating these notions through experience rather than theoretical reflection. This does not invalidate the result, but it often makes it difficult to think of illustration as a system—something especially relevant in the editorial field.

The two fundamental activities of illustration

Every genuine illustration fulfills at least two basic functions:

1. It accompanies
Illustration does not exist in isolation: it accompanies a text, an idea, a narrative, an editorial discourse. It does not compete with or replace it; it engages in dialogue.

2. It illuminates* (see note at the end of the article)
To illustrate is to shed light on the content. To clarify, expand, suggest, create tension, or enrich meaning. Not to decorate, not to embellish gratuitously, not to distract.

When these two activities are not present, the image may be interesting, beautiful, or provocative, but it is not fulfilling an illustrative function.

The illustrative chain

Illustration is not an isolated act, but the result of a process. I call this process the illustrative chain.

It is composed of five fundamental links:

• The client

• The audience

• The medium

• The content

• The purpose

Each of these elements conditions visual decisions. Ignoring any one of them weakens the whole. The final illustration is always the result of the tension and balance among these factors.

From an editorial perspective, this chain is not optional: it is structural.

Placement and responsibility

Drawing, as an autonomous practice, can dispense with all of these elements. It may not accompany, not illuminate, not address anyone in particular. In that case, there is no conflict at all.

The problem arises when a decontextualized image seeks to occupy the place of illustration without assuming its communicative responsibilities—when exhibition is confused with function, personal expression with editorial discourse.

It is worth clarifying this precisely: this does not imply that illustration is a superior activity to drawing. It is not. They are different practices, with different demands. The confusion arises when illustration is presented as a hierarchical step, rather than what it truly is: a craft in the service of communication.

That is why I maintain that:

An illustration without placement becomes presumption.

These statements may seem repetitive or even uncomfortable. That is not a problem. Throughout the next texts I will develop each of the elements of the illustrative chain to show, with greater precision, the real—conceptual and operational—distance between drawing and illustrating.

Not to exclude, but to understand.
Not to establish hierarchies, but to name things correctly.

* To illuminate / ILLUSTRATION

It is worth noting the etymological meaning of the word illustration:

The word illustration comes from the Latin illustratio, derived from the verb illustrare, which means “to make visible, to illuminate, to clarify.” In turn, illustrare is composed of:

• in- → indicating inward direction or intensity

• lustrare → meaning to illuminate, adorn, traverse, derived from lux, meaning light

Etymological conclusion

Literally, to illustrate means “to cast light upon something,” “to make something visible or understandable.”

Versión español en: OscarSenonez.Substack.com

If this is your first time visiting me, start here. 👇:

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrative chain • illustrated books

..........................

In 2020, I produced a season of the Sen Imago Podcast in which I revisited these ideas and adapted them to the audio format, exploring their implications through a different cadence and a different mode of listening. Those who wish to access this material can do so at the following link: PODCAST (Spanish only)

A few years ago, back in 2009, I started writing about editorial illustration on a blog that, truth be told, ended up gathering digital dust. The texts were a bit rough, but honest: I talked about the difference between drawing and illustrating, about that invisible chain linking the writer, editor, designer, and illustrator, about the craft as something more than just making “pretty pictures.” I tried to take apart some of the ideas we all took for granted in the world of illustrated books.

One of those ideas I tossed out almost casually —“drawing is not illustrating, and illustrating is not drawing”— ended up taking on a life of its own. Over the years, I’ve heard colleagues from my country and around the world mention it in talks, use it in their classes, and even cite it in university theses on illustration and editorial design. It still makes me smile (and feel honored) to see how a phrase born on a nearly forgotten blog keeps circulating and helping others put a name to something many of us feel in the craft.

Time passed, life, commissions, and social media slowly ate up that space. The articles stayed there, but they never stopped swirling in my head. Many are still valid—or more valid than ever—and others deserve a second read and expansion with the perspective the years bring.

That’s why I decided to bring them back.

What You’ll Find Here (and What You Won’t)

This corner will mainly be a calm, updated revision of those texts written from 2009 onward. I’ll republish them, sometimes with new notes, corrections, or reflections from the current Oscar—with a few more gray hairs. It’s not pure nostalgia: it’s a way to organize ideas that still feel useful and share them with anyone who wants to peek into the inner workings of the craft.

You won’t find quick tutorials or tips for going viral with your portfolio. Though from time to time I might comment on my own work process as a sort of lesson or drop a bit of advice for beginners and aspiring illustrators, this space isn’t mainly about that. You’ll find uncomfortable questions and ideas, analyses of why an illustration works—or doesn’t—inside a book, reflections on the illustrator’s role in the narrative, on the rhetoric of the image, a bit of history, and occasionally a critical look at the industry.

The world is no longer the same as it was in 2009, and neither are the challenges facing illustrators and the publishing sector today. The massive arrival of so-called “artificial intelligence” is changing things brutally and quickly. I’ll face this new landscape head-on—not to demonize technology or ignore it, but to analyze what it means to be an illustrator (and human) in a world where images are no longer scarce but abundant… and disposable. Because, in the end, the craft has always been about meaning, not just production.

And that, for now, no machine has learned to do.

Why There Are No Images (and Why There Is an Ex Libris)

Most of my articles won’t include my own images on purpose. I want the focus to be on the ideas, not on visual spectacle. In a world saturated with fast images (many of them AI-generated), I prefer to force the imagination (or memory) to work: let each reader visualize what they read in their own way.

And each of my short theoretical essays will be numbered with a personal Ex Libris (Ex Libris 01, 02…), briefly mentioning “Sen imago,” the old blog where I first started writing. It’s my discreet mark of ownership and origin, like the old engravings in books. A nod to editorial tradition and a reminder that these reflections are mine, born from years in the craft, and that I lend them (not give them away) to anyone who wants to read them.

Simple and unadorned. As it should be.

My Goal in the End

I don’t write to always be right. I write to think about the craft I love so much. My goal is to get others to think along with me.

If you agree with me, great: I’ve achieved my goal—we share a perspective and something shifts in the mind.

If you disagree and want to argue or push back, I’ve still achieved my goal: we’re thinking about what really matters.

And if you scroll past and it leaves you cold… well, in that case I haven’t achieved my goal, but the loser isn’t me—it’s the craft, which misses out on a conversation it always needs.

In the end, what matters is that we keep talking about illustration, books, the publishing world—thinking and rethinking what we love so much.

I’m still the same: illustrator of children’s, young adult, and adult literature, cover artist… and a dreamer, a magician, and a dragon hunter… in short, a freelance professional, but with more wrinkles and far less patience for clichés.

If you’re interested in understanding what happens when an image has to dialogue with text, if you’re tired of social media noise and prefer reading something that invites thought, stay.

This is no fairy tale.
This is the inner workings of illustration.

Welcome.
(Or welcome back).

Oscar Senonez / www.OscarSenonez.com

The Spanish-language version of these reflections is available at :

Bienvenidos a este rincón (o volvemos a él) / Oscar Senonez | Substack

Related topics: editorial illustration • illustrated chain • picture books