Technical Illustration - A Historical Perspective
by Kevin Hulsey
The Birth of Infographics
"Let no one doubt, that the man who does not perfectly understand what he is attempting to do when painting, will never be a good painter. It is useless to draw the bow, unless you have a target to aim to arrow at." Leon Battista Alberti - Della Pictura
Since the dawn of man, humans have sought out ways of communicating ideas, practices, and customs to contemporaries and future generations alike. The beginning of illustration predates written records. Pictorial iconography in the form of petroglyphs ("rock inscriptions" pecked or chiseled into a stone surface) exploded during the late paleolithic period, which lasted from 30,000 B.C. to 10,000 B.C.
The scribes, painters and stone cutters of ancient Egypt, 3200 B.C. to 30 B.C., were probably among the first "commercial" artists. Their visual and written language, hieroglyphics ("sacred inscriptions"), depicted religious practices, political propaganda, scientific data, and daily life. As adept and prolific as these Egyptian artisans were, their early profile drawings and pictographs failed to combine height, width, and depth into one view of an object. This lack of three dimensional depth and illusion limited their pictographs and glyphs to a form of visual shorthand.
Like the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians, the architectural drawings of the early Greeks, 1100 B.C. to 100 B.C., also lacked depth and dimension. In fact, in an effort to have nature imitate art, the ancient Greek architects designed their buildings to visually fight against the viewer's intuitive understanding of perspective. The best example of this is the Parthenon (438 B.C.) in Athens Greece. The structure was situated atop the Acropolis compound in such a way that it could only be approached from one vantage point. The rear of the structure is taller and wider than the front, and the side columns increase in mass from front to rear. This construction technique gave the Parthenon an appearance that appoximated the flat or orthographic views they were use to seeing in their architectural renderings and art.
During the Renaissance period (1400-1600), major advancements in painting, architectural rendering and descriptive or "technical" illustration took place through the work of artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), and Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520). Leonardo da Vinci's artistic ability combined with his scientific curiosity provided the means and impetus for a merging of visual art with science and invention. Artist and architect Leon Battista Alberti's treatise of 1436 "Della pictura" (On Painting) was the first modern manual for painters. Inspired by the groundbreaking encyclopedic treatise "De architectura" from Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (1st century B.C.), Alberti wrote "De re aedificatoria" (1485), a treatise on the techniques and methodologies of architecture and architectural rendering.
The creation of spatial illusion was another major achievement of the Renaissance period. At this time, pictorial drawing took on a three dimensional quality. The evolution of what we now call "classical" or "illusionistic perspective" was taking place, and drawing in three dimensional perspective became something of an obsession for architects, inventors, and painters of the period. Gone were the days when the relative scale of various figures was determined primarily by their religious significance, as in medieval "Last Judgment" paintings and frescos. There was a totally new realization that objects appear to get smaller as their distance from the observer increases. One of da Vinci's younger contemporaries, Raphael worked on perfecting the technique of three dimensional perspective which he used in his pen and paper architectural studies. For the fist time, the process that takes place between the two-dimensional image that the eye creates, and the three-dimensional image that the brain interprets, was recreated on the two-dimensional surface of the paper or canvas.
While Alberti, da Vinci, Raphael, et al pushed the boundaries of artistic, technical and scientific understanding, Flemish painters, such as Jan Van Eyck (c. 1390-1441), perfected the illusion of three dimensional reality through their mastery of light's reflection on a variety of surfaces. Because of this, Dutch painting, was often labelled as "realistic" painting. It would be several hundred years before the merging of realism and mechanical drawing.
Modern Technical Illustration
"Industrialists and merchants confront each other brandishing images like an advertising weapon. Debauchery without precedent, a disorder makes the walls explode. No brake, no law comes to temper this overheated atmosphere that shatters the retina..." Fernand Léger
The industrial revolution further refined the field of technical illustration. Mass production and outsourcing created the need to adopt conventions and standards in technical illustration that were universally understood. Yet the drawings of this period remained devoid of realism or three dimensional depth, making them difficult for a non-technical lay person to relate to on a human level. During the early 1900s, modern artists in the Abstract Expressionist and Dadaist movement such as Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Fernand Léger (1881-1955), and Joan Miró (1893-1983) used these simple "technical" and product drawings as abstract elements in their paintings to convey their dismay and dislike of these "symbols of capitalist consciousness".
Early Patent Drawings (c 1800s)
The birth of "scientific" or "Linear 3-point perspective" during the mid 1900s gave both artist and technical illustrator a predictable methodology for illustrating objects and environments more realistically. Unlike "classical" perspective, which would combine multiple picture planes or points of view into one drawing, only a single point of view was now used. Thus, a new concept in drawing was realized when it was generally accepted that parallel lines, if extended to infinity, would appear to meet at a single point on the horizon. Through this creation of pictorial or illusionary space, the drawing appears to recede backward into depth, and away from the picture plane or "viewer". By predetermining a fixed viewpoint, the illustrator can create an "objective" recording of one's visual experience. The impression that this technique makes on the brain is so powerful that once mastered, the illusion remains even though the visual trickery has been exposed. Additionally, a lay person with no technical understanding of the principles of perspective has an intuitive negative reaction to a piece of art if something is amiss.
During this period, technical and product illustrators used variant line weights to emphasize mass, proximity, and scale which helped to make a complex line drawing more understandable to the lay person. Cross hatching, stipple, and other basic techniques gave greater depth and dimension to the subject matter, however technical illustration largely remained a black and white or halftone affair. In the early '60s, Pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein took to lampooning these iconic "commercial" illustrations, both for their banal and stark visual simplicity, as well as the statement that they make about our highly industrialized, consumer culture.
Birth of the "Cut-Away"
The "Cut-Away" illustration made its first appearance sometime during the late 1800s. The view of choice for these early representations was usually a two-dimensional side elevation view.
Early Cutaway Drawings (c1890s) - From "Inomoto Drawing"
During the 1930s Russell Porter was one of the pioneers in the field of three-dimensional cutaway illustration. Although technical illustration was only a side-line for Mr. Porter, his work is some of the earliest of this artform. While working on the design of Caltech's Palomar telescope, Mr. Porter perfected his "cutaway" drawing technique. During WW2 he assisted in the war effort by designing and drawing military hardware. He was dubbed the "Cutaway Man" by Pentagon officials for his ability to draw the internal workings of complex machinery by cutting through the outer "skin".
During the 1970s famed Japanese illustrator Yoshihiro Inomoto was one of the pioneers in three-dimensional "cutaway" style automotive drawings and illustrations done in pen-and-ink.
Early Cutaway Drawings (c1950s & 1960s)
Modern technical illustration advanced again during the late 1960s, with the help of the photo-realist art movement. Through the use of paint brush, pencil, and airbrush, artists became adept at mimicking photography, and realism was again in vogue. By merging technical illustration and photo-realism, the technical illustrator could now convey highly complex technical information to someone with little understanding of mechanics or drafting. The merging of these two distinct art forms had finally elevated technical illustration from lowbrow informational imagery into the realm of fine art.
The Future
"Computer graphics digs up the ageless philosophical question, What is art?" Dr. Rodney Chang - SIhanghai University College of Fine Arts "A computer has no idea of its own. It can't wake up in the middle of the night and invent Cubism or Impressionism or Pop Art. Before it can make an electronic image, it must be fed the right instructions." Kathie Beals, Gannett News Service
Although modern technology has become so complex that it is beyond the grasp of most consumers, human curiosity and the desire to "know" how things work will provide fertile ground for the technical illustrators of the future.
One might ask what part "human" illustrators will play in an increasingly digital world. While computer programs are very good at collecting, deciphering, and regurgitating objective information, they are still incapable of subjective understanding. Technical illustration, like it's highbrow cousin, fine art, is still highly subjective. Even though computer drawing programs are taking much of the drudgery out of technical illustration, It will still be important for the illustrator to have a fundamental understanding of the basic principles of drawing that have brought us this far. The computer is just a tool, like the airbush, paintbrush, or pencil that came before it. In the wrong hands, it will produce something of minimal aesthetic value, while in the right hands, it will produce something of great beauty.
An effective technical illustration will always require a human touch. Only a human can decide what another human will find aesthetically pleasing and understandable. Through the use of sophisticated drawing programs, technical illustrators will have powerful new tools at their disposal to further the goal of increasing human visual understanding and push the boundaries of this long-enduring art form.
Suggestions for further study
David Kirsh, Associate Professor, Why Illustrations Aid Understanding. Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego
Jon M. Duff, Ph.D., Greg Maxson, The Complete Technical Illustrator, 1st Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill
Jon M. Duff, Ph.D., Industrial Technical Illustration. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Publishing
John A. Dennison, Charles D. Johnson, Technical Illustration: Techniques and Applications IL: Goodheart-Willcox Company, Inc.
Rex Vicat Cole, Perspective For Artists. New York: Dover Press
French, Svensen, Helsel, Urbanick, Mechanical Drawing. New York: McGraw-Hill
John Adkins Richardson., Art: The Way It Is. N. J.: Prentice-Hall
Rex Vicat Cole., Perspective For Artists. New York: Dover Press
Paolo Graziosi., Paleolithic Art. New York: McGraw-Hill
Michalowski, Kazimierz Art Of Ancient Egypt. New York: Abrams
Lawrence, Arnold W. Greek Architecture Baltimore: Penguin Books
Erwin Panofsky Early Netherlandish Painting. Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Varnedoe, Gopnik High And Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture. New York: Museum Of Modern Art
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