Fine Art vs Illustration
Difference between fine art and illustration is actually quite easy to understand. However, you will see that fine art and illustration are two terms that are often used as interchangeable. Since both belong to the art industry many assume they mean the same thing when it is quite wrong to assume that. You simply have to remember that they are two forms of art that depict very different work. This article focuses on the difference that exists between fine art and illustration to make you realize what each art category stands for.
What is Fine Art?
Fine art is a creative piece of art made by an artist, a painter or a sculptor and is exhibited in an art show for sale. Pieces of fine art are usually kept in art gallery attached to a museum. Many such museums are seen in the countries of Europe. They are called art museums.
Fine art is not created with a motive of getting it printed. It is created for purely imaginative or aesthetic purposes. Fine art is commercial in purpose and is divided into drawing, painting, water-color painting, and sculpture too. However, to earn money in fine arts you should be someone with good talent because it is the unique, imaginative sense of your work that will get your work sold.
What is Illustration?
Illustration is different from gallery art in the sense that it refers to works of art that appeal to the human eye like drawings and paintings commissioned for reproduction in print or other media.
Any piece of art created for a magazine’s front cover or a movie poster for that matter is looked upon as an illustration. Drawings that appear in the children’s magazines, family magazines, and newspapers are all called illustrations. The very purpose of illustration is to get it printed. Illustration is supportive in purpose and is more commercial in sense. Illustration supports a short story narrated in a magazine or a person or a character depicted in an essay or in a write-up in a magazine or a journal. Illustrations are also used in movie industry as well when movie makers are imaging scenes of their production. Illustration, therefore, has many paths in which it can be used. As a result, it brings more money as an occupation.
Illustration of the White Rabbit from “Alice in Wonderland.”
An illustrator has to be very innovative and he has to move very closely with the story or the essay. He should clearly understand the situation of the story that needs depiction in the form of an illustration. Some of the illustrators have become world-famous.
What is the difference between Fine Art and Illustration?
• Fine art is a creative piece of art made by an artist, a painter or a sculptor and is exhibited in an art show for sale.
• Illustration refers to works of art that appeal to the human eye like drawings and paintings commissioned for reproduction in print or other media. This is the main difference between illustration and fine art.
• Drawings that appear in children’s magazines, family magazines, and newspapers are all called illustrations.
• Fine art and illustration differ from each other in terms of the purpose of their creation. Fine art is created for imaginative or aesthetic purposes. Illustrations are created to be printed.
• When it comes to money-making, both can be used well. However, earning money with illustrations is easier as it has a wide variety of options. Fine art, on the other hand, can be unsuccessful if the artist lacks imagination.
Images Courtesy:
- Fine art by Vikasheera12 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- In the book “Alice in Wonderland” the White Rabbit, by John Tenniel via Wikicommons (Public Domain)
