Welcome to This Corner (or Back Again)
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
