El arte del álbum ilustrado: La ilustración infantil como elemento estético hipertextual

Abstract

The picture book, called illustrated book or illustrated album, is considered an independent category within children’s literature. It is “a primary form of postmodernism because of its open-minded and because of the interrelations between text and image that are established within” (Senis, 2014, p.116). Text and image are codependent of each other; if one of them is absent, the story would be incomprehensible. This is a main point of this genre but it should not be taken as a definitive statement. The relationship between text and image are multiple and of different nature. Some of these characteristics gain the interest of designers, visual artists, self-taught artists and writers, who are the ones who intervene in the creation of the picture book. What I am proposing to do is to develop an illustrated album with a mixed technique: a hand drawing colored in Photoshop. The main idea will be about a cat that is searching for his true love and has the adventure of a lifetime. The reader will be absorbed by the illustrations because the text will not be straightforward but it will also make the illustration a hypertext structure providing a different experience and understanding like no other. It aims to simplify technical aspects and concepts of the illustrations, constantly appealing to the metaphoric correlation between the plasticity and the literality which allows an uncountable number of readings due to the image’s polysemic character.