PEN AND MOUSE:THE SHIFTING CHALLENGES OF TECHNOLOGY IN UNDERSTANDING ILLUSTRATION AS PRACTICE.

“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future'.<br/>Marshall McLuhan<br/><br/>In the book Pen and Mouse: Commercial Art and Digital Illustration edited by Angus Hyland and Roanne Bell published in 2001, there was an attempt to profile how contemporary Illustrators had overcome the rise of desktop publishing and the computer as medium. It can be argued how successive this was within publishing, but it did represent a genuine attempt to push the argument and explore how current illustrators were embracing the digital. <br/>Technology through the printing revolution, the movable printing press of Johannes Gutenberg invented around 1440, has intrinsically been part of the story of Illustration, in the age of mechanical reproduction fast forward to today with the advent of AI computer generated images this paper will argue that Illustrators as ever will adapt and innately respond using such technology.<br/>As Illustration entered the dematerialised space, in an age of the image, not only has it facilitated a widening demographic of those entering the commercial field, the accessibility of Illustration has empowered and offered a visual voice for many beyond the making of images as a product of commerce, to those constructing visual worlds as affirmation of oneself, identity and gender, of creating constructed safe spaces. <br/>This has arguably contributed to the significant rise of those wanting to study and research the subject of Illustration, particularly within UK higher education, where according to The Complete University Guide in 2025 there are 136 undergraduate courses and 38 postgraduate courses with Illustration as their name leading to a cultural shift as to what it means today to be an Illustrator. <br/><br/>The presentation of the paper will discursively use Miro digital whiteboard as a non-linear means of sharing some of the arguments contained in this paper to embrace how technology should not be feared by Illustration. <br/>