Discover our collection of illustrative prints for sale in our online art gallery. We showcase some of the most exciting contemporary artists working today. If you’re looking for something for your home or workplace, try exploring our illustrative cityscape prints or illustrative botanical prints.
Kristjana S Williams is an Icelandic artist who creates incredibly detailed and fantastical worlds. In Columbian Jungle 2016 (2015) Williams juxtaposes black and white with bright colours to make the piece visually engaging and intriguing. Your eyes are drawn to the colourful birds in the centre, but as you look closer, the tree in the middle guides your eyes up and around the image to meet many interesting creatures. The result is a playful and busy composition that can leave you desperate to enter her exotic worlds of flora and fauna.
Bruce McLean is a notable artist in the contemporary British illustrative scene. His prints are bold yet simple, with figures and forms constructed of confident lines and a limited colour palette. His style and choice of subject is both unique and intriguing, as can be seen in works such as Qweesh not Quiche (2016).
David Hockney is particularly unmissable when it comes to illustrative prints ! With artworks such as Made in April, The Old Guitarist or A Picture of Ourselves, you can see David Hockney’s iconic style shine through! But David Hockney also makes screen printed lithographs such as Gorge d’Incre, representing a beautiful abstract landscape !
London-based Tracey Emin has been exploring techniques to tell stories about female self-representation for many years now ! She is often a sell-out on our website, so you might want to be quick whenever a new print comes up ! Her highly personal and recognisable style would make her illustrative prints shine in any space.
Rob Ryan creates colourful and quirky prints based on his collage works that work across typography and papercut details. With his faceless cartoon figures, Rob Ryan takes us on a fantasmagorical journey through his world with prints such as You Can Still Do A Lot and Give Me Work, which will remind many of us illustrations from children’s books!
History of Illustration
An illustration can be defined as a decoration, interpretation or visual explanation. It is a hugely versatile art form which blurs the distinction between drawing and fine art, with contemporary artists drawing influence from multiple sources, such as graffiti, fashion, computer games and animation.
The first examples of the recording of events through imagery can be dated back to cave paintings. Throughout ancient civilisations we can also witness a desire to record through illustrative decoration. In Ancient Greece, for example, ceremonies, sporting events and mythological tales were often drawn or incised onto vessels or used to decorate walls and mosaics.
In the 14th century, the invention of the mechanical printing process by Johannes Gutenberg meant that publications could be mass-produced and distributed. With the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s, technological advances meant that printing became more rapid and illustrations became more commonplace.
It was in the 1800s that the profession of illustration really took off. The first wave of artists, such as Jessie Willcox or Frank E. Schoonover, demonstrated that it was a viable profession and attracted many more to illustration. It became popular to use illustrations commercially, in advertising but also for entertainment purposes, with Walt Disney establishing himself in the field with the first animated sound cartoon Steamboat Willie released in 1928.
